The University of California (UC) is facing a lawsuit over a January decision to keep illegal migrant students from working campus jobs.
A group of petitioners sued the UC Board of Regents on Tuesday, claiming that a policy barring illegal migrant students from holding campus jobs is “discriminatory.” The UC Regents adopted a policy in 2023 to let illegal migrant students work on-campus jobs, but decided not to implement it in January, EdSource reported.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which bars hiring illegal migrants, does not apply to state employers, including the University of California, the lawsuit argues. Petitioners, which include undocumented students, claimed that the policy has had “devastating” effects, restricting students’ with “great academic promise.”
“More broadly, the people of this State are being deprived of the important contributions that these students would have made if their academic ambitions had not been needlessly stifled by the Regents’ policy,” the lawsuit argues.
Migrants board Border Patrol vans after waiting along the border wall to surrender to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents for immigration and asylum claim processing upon crossing the Rio Grande river into the United Staes on the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas on May 11, 2023. (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
“First, the Regents’ policy is an abuse of discretion,” the filing argues. “Even where state officials have discretion to set policy, they must do so based on an accurate understanding of applicable law. Here, the Regents’ student hiring policy is premised on an erroneous interpretation of IRCA.”
The Regents’ policy on the hiring practices also allegedly violates the Fair Employment and Housing Act’s (FEHA) ban on discriminating against immigration status, the petitioners argued. UC is not required by federal law or IRCA to adopt the hiring policy, the lawsuit claims. (RELATED: NYC Enlists College Students To Help Illegal Migrants Apply For Asylum)
The university could be subject to possible legal implications if it hires illegal migrant students, including “civil fines, criminal penalties, or debarment from federal contracting,” UC system President Michael Drake stated in January, according to EdSource. Human resources faculty members could potentially face prosecution if they knowingly engage in hiring practices not aligned with the federal law.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill in September that would have prohibited public universities in the state from disqualifying a student from being hired based on their immigration status. The percentage of illegal migrant students enrolled at the UC and California State University (CSU) dropped around 50% respectively from the years 2016-2017 to 2022-2023, due largely to legal problems surrounding the DACA program.
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