California university system intends to make on-campus jobs available to undocumented students

Undocumented students are one step closer to being able to work on-campus jobs across the University of California’s 10 campuses thanks to a new policy adopted Thursday by the university’s Board of Regents.

“The university believes that all university students, regardless of immigration status, should have the same opportunity to realize the benefits of university student employment,” read the new policy, which the regents adopted on the final day of their spring meeting at UCLA.

For months, student organizers have urged the university to change its policy on hiring undocumented students. On-campus jobs are crucial sources of income for students who struggle to afford college, the students say. Undocumented students also miss out on valuable learning experiences through research positions, lab work and internships.

“This is a huge step toward ensuring equal access to opportunities for all students across the University of California system,” said Karely Amaya, a UCLA graduate student in public policy and a leader of the Undocumented Student-led Network, in a statement Thursday.

The students argue that states and certain state entities are exempted from the 1986 federal law that bars the hiring of employees who lack proper documentation. Legal scholars from the UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law & Policy worked with the students to develop the analysis on which they based their arguments.

“As law professors with considerable experience in immigration law,” wrote UCLA law professors Hiroshi Motomura and Ahilan Arulanantham in an open sign-on letter of support, “we write primarily to affirm that we believe that the legal foundation for hiring undocumented students within UC, as described in the attached memorandum, is sound.”

As of Thursday, at least 25 other law professors — including by Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law — had endorsed the letter.

The board appointed a so-called Regents Working Group that will, by the end of November, develop a strategy for how to implement the change and, presumably, how to defend it from legal challenges.

“The working group will determine whether, how and when to implement next steps,” wrote the UC Office of the President in an emailed statement.

The President’s Office would not provide additional details about how many members the working group included, how they were chosen and whether any undocumented students would participate in the process.

“First and foremost, we as undocumented UC students must have a seat at the table — and that has yet to be the case leading up to this point,” said Jeffry Umaña Muñoz, a UCLA undergraduate and student organizer., in a Thursday statement “We alone know what it means to be undocumented and denied equal access to opportunities on campus.”

This story was originally published May 19, 2023 at 5:00 AM.