UC plan to hire undocumented students ‘cautiously progressing’

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The University of California system is cautiously pursuing a plan that would help undocumented students by giving them on-campus jobs, in a move that could potentially defy the federal authority.

The UC system’s governing board of regents voted in May in favour of developing the plan, saying that the lack of employment options is a major barrier to education for students not regarded as legally living in the US. But no further details of how it will work have since been released.

About 100,000 young immigrants without legal status graduated from US high schools this year, but less than 10 per cent of them even attempt college. California has nearly 45,000 such students – about a fifth of the US total – with about 4,000 of them in the UC system.

“This would be really significant, and life-changing for students,” said an advocate of the California initiative, Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which represents more than 550 US college and university presidents and chancellors. Attempts to change immigration policy, however, are especially controversial across the US, and federal law generally forbids the hiring of people who are not legally in the country.

With the UC system’s implementation date drawing near, the leaders of the 10-campus grouping of top-ranked public institutions still have not put their promised programme in place, and are not guaranteeing they will.