Activists 'Shadow' University of California’s Effort To Create Jobs For Undocumented Students

The University of California regents are crafting a major shift in policy that would allow students who are undocumented to have campus jobs.

But the group of activists who pressed for that change want more collaboration. They say they’ve researched their own implementation plan, hoping the UC regents want to use the information.

Crickets.

The agenda for Thursday’s UC Regents board meeting included an item for the closed session portion that’s expected to have consequential effects on the entire UC system and likely other universities in the state and the nation. That item: “Legal Issues Related to Equitable Student Employment Opportunities.” It’s about a policy change UC adopted in May to open campus jobs to students who don’t have the legal authorization to reside in the U.S.

“I'm an undocumented student at UC Santa Barbara,” said Cindy Guzman by phone during the public comment session, just before regents convened behind closed doors to talk about the topic. “As a student going into my third year of computer science with no internships related to my field of study under my belt, I am afraid of where my career will go without these opportunities.”

Guzman is a member of the Opportunity For All campaign, the group of students and UC legal scholars who researched whether the change in who can be employed would comply with state and federal law. The research identified that UC, as a state agency, was not bound by federal law to exclude people who are undocumented from jobs in state agencies.

The same group also organized a campaign to pressure UC Regents to adopt a new policy. In May, the UC Regents agreed with the campaign’s findings that opening up campus job opportunities would enrich other students’ education and further equity efforts toward all students.

The new policy will require navigation through human resources, employment law, and other aspects of the university bureaucracy. To sort through those issues, the regents created a working group after the May vote to draft a plan for campuses.

As to specifics?

“The working group’s operations have been opaque,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, the UCLA law school professor who led the legal research.

And that's what has Opportunity For All members worried.

“I definitely feel like we'd be stronger… the process would be more robust if we were actually having some dialogue and working through the implementation issues together. And thus far that has not happened,” Arulanantham said. “We tried.”

After the May vote the group shifted to find out on its own what campuses needed to do.

UCLA student Karely Amaya speaks in support of opening jobs to students who are undocumented at the May 18, 2023 UC Regents meeting.

(

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

)

“Our next move on the student side was to basically create a shadow work group, a smaller form committee of us that would be focused on engaging with the regents,” UCLA student Jeffry Umaña Muñoz said. He’s a core organizer with Opportunity for All.

Bringing in personal experience

Students who are undocumented and in the group say they know how UC’s provision of services is supposed to work and the difficulties students face in practice.

The shadow group consulted with an immigration and employment law firm as well as a UCLA HR official, Arulanantham said, and the findings are being drafted into a report that he hopes to give to UC Regents. He said their research shows the change can be implemented as soon as January.

The clock is ticking. The regents are two months away from a self-imposed deadline to create an implementation plan for the campuses to carry out the change.

The university working group has met five times in closed session for one-hour meetings. At the August 9, 2023 meeting, members of the Opportunity for All campaign were invited to take part. One student in the meeting said she came away encouraged by the back and forth. But another said he expected more than listening from the regents.

“What my takeaway was from leaving the [Aug. 9] meeting with the workgroup is that the regents weren't all that open to collaborating with our experts on the development of the implementation plan,” said Umaña Muñoz, who attended the working group meeting.

A university spokesman did not divulge whose input the official working group has considered so far, but did say that group has gathered input from “subject-matter experts, undocumented students, and legal counsel.”

Opportunity for All tried one more time on Thursday to urge Regents to collaborate.

“I know people in the university administration and the general counsel's office are also working on these issues,” Arulanantham said during public comment.

“I would encourage you please, to speak with us and do encourage them to speak with us. We're now on the same side,” he said.

Fading opportunities

With the federal DACA program in legal jeopardy and unable to expand, the population of college students who are undocumented and without work authorization has grown.

“It's really hard and discouraging to keep going,” said Diana Ortiz, a sociology major who’s graduating in the spring from UC Berkeley. She's also undocumented.

Even if the policy change happens before her graduation day, she said, the potential money from a job and professional work opportunities may be too little too late. For her, the urgency is tied to newer students.

“I have other undocumented friends who are younger than me," she said, "and I would like them to have a better experience than I have.”