Undocumented students rethinking college futures after Newsom’s veto of campus jobs bill

For three years, college students and scholars in California sought to open the financial and educational opportunity of jobs for undocumented students. Their effort ended on Sunday with a gubernatorial veto of Assembly Bill 2586.

It wasn’t the outcome the proposal’s supporters wanted.

“The immediate reaction was heartbreak and fear and grief,” said Jeffry Umaña Muñoz, a graduate student at California State University, Los Angeles who’s an organizer with the Undocumented Student-Led Network. They call their effort Opportunity for All.

He and members of his group have worked since 2021 to urge the University of California to change policy to open up campus jobs:

Umaña Muñoz said dozens of college students met in two Zoom meetings Sunday night to console each other after the veto.

“Before the ink even dried, lives had already changed,” he said.

His own included, he added.

Graduate school work often includes paid research work in a student’s academic discipline. That work provides essential academic experience as well as needed funds to pay for college-related costs, such as food, rent, and transportation.

“I do not know if I will be able to afford Cal State L.A.’s tuition charge next semester, which means that I may leave my master’s program after this semester,” Umaña Muñoz said.

He does not have the authorization to live in the U.S., nor does he qualify under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Umaña Muñoz and other activists are balancing the disappointment of a veto with the support they’ve received from other state elected officials from both parties, scholars, and some university administrators. They say their efforts are not over.

Why this veto?

At issue in the bill, and the Opportunity for All’s campaign, is whether state agencies have to follow the 1986 federal Immigration Reform and Control Act’s provisions that compels private employers to confirm employees’ authorization to work in the U.S.

Legal scholars at UCLA, Stanford University and other prominent law schools say there is no language in the law compelling state employers to follow that edict.

In his veto statement, Gov. Gavin Newsom said elected leaders before him had opened opportunities for undocumented students. He cited the 2001 state law that allows undocumented students to pay in-state college tuition.

But he would not go out on a limb to sign this proposal, echoing the strong opposition issued by University of California President Michael Drake earlier this year.

“Given the gravity of the potential consequences of this bill, which include potential criminal and civil liability for state employees, it is critical that the courts address the legality of such a policy and the novel legal theory behind this legislation before proceeding,” Newsom wrote.

The California Senate and Assembly had voted to open campus jobs at the University of California, California State University and the state’s community colleges to students who are undocumented.

The Undocumented Student-Led Network believed that would encourage Newsom to sign the bill.

“The moral case for supporting them is so compelling. I think they just really believed that the governor would do the right thing,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a professor of immigration law at UCLA who’s been working with the students to demonstrate the proposal is legally sound.

“For many of them, this is their first really intensive political engagement,” Arulanantham said.

Where does the effort go from here?

According to the student activists, about 5,000 students across the state’s higher education systems took part in the campaign and about 150 organized on various campuses.

Student leaders said it’s just as important to them to change people’s minds about who has the right to work as it is to try again to pass the policy.

“Students also did express this commitment to what we were fighting for, this idea that we’re fighting for a basic human right, the right to dignified labor,” Umaña Muñoz said. “I think undocumented youth are tired of being told to wait.”

The effort is not dead. Newsom suggested that University of California leaders step forward and ask state courts to weigh in on whether the proposal is legally sound, and Assemblymember David Alvarez, author of the vetoed bill, said he would re-introduce the bill.