Undocumented UC Students to Receive Free Legal Services

A day after the UC Board of Regents voted to increase students’ tuition over the next five years, UC President Janet Napolitano announced today that undocumented immigrants attending UC Riverside and five other campuses will be entitled to free legal counseling aimed at helping them stay in the country.

“This legal aid could be anything from filing to become a permanent resident, to obtain a work visa -- anything that relates to immigration law,” Professor Leticia Saucedo of the UC Davis School of Law told City News Service.

UCD is taking the lead in Napolitano’s pilot program, to be handled through Undocumented Student Legal Services Centers at UCR, UC Merced, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz.

According to the UC Office of the President, $577,860 has been allocated in support of the program.

“This pilot program is just the beginning,” Napolitano said. “We want to create a model for other UC campuses and universities across the nation to provide legal representation for undocumented students on their campuses.”

Napolitano’s announcement comes a day after President Obama -- in whose administration Napolitano served as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security until September 2013 -- delivered an address to the nation vowing unilateral steps to expand protections for up to five million undocumented immigrants.

The president dismissed the current federal framework for dealing with asylum-seekers as a “broken system” and promised the use of executive orders to qualify undocumenteds for permanent residency and citizenship.

Critics have denounced the move as a usurpation of congressional authority and another path to amnesty.

Ira Mehlman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform told CNS that Napolitano’s UC system pilot program is “consistent with her record as DHS secretary and governor of Arizona.”

“How do you justify this a day after raising tuition and squeezing thousands of hard-pressed students, who are here legally, trying to get an education?” Mehlman said. “There’s no reason to spend state money providing legal services to illegal aliens.”

Mehlman said Napolitano appears to place a “higher priority on people who have entered the country illegally than law-abiding citizens.”

According to the UC president’s office, the new program will strive to ensure that undocumented students and their relatives receive “high-quality legal assistance.”

UC officials said there will be “know-your-rights” legal clinics, one- on-one counseling and help with processing applications for maintaining residency under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

DACA has been largely blamed for the influx of “unaccompanied minors” crossing the border for the last two years. Obama announced Thursday night that DACA will be expanded to spare hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers from deportation.

“This administration is going to do nothing to enforce the law,” Mehlman said. “California is going to do nothing to deter illegal immigration; it’s doing everything possible to help illegal aliens. Programs like the one Janet Napolitano is parading today shows contempt for citizens.”

According to Saucedo, beneficiaries of the pilot program may include individuals not enrolled at any of the listed universities.

“We’re leaving it up to each campus to decide what they can handle,” she told CNS.

Under California’s DREAM Act, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011, undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria are provided with state-based financial aid for college.

--City News Service