University of California students in the United States illegally are demanding its universities comply with a court ruling and allow them to hold campus jobs.

The Daily Bruinreports the California Supreme Court let stand last October an appeals court ruling which said the UC system “cannot bar undocumented students from holding on-campus jobs” and that its “current hiring policies discriminate based on immigration status.”

The decision appears to butt heads with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to veto Assembly Bill 2586 two years ago, which would have “allowed undocumented students equal access to campus jobs at public universities.”

Newsom cited issues regarding “complying with federal law, including potential criminal and civil liability for staff who hire undocumented students.”

But currently in the works is Assembly Bill 713, last referred to the State Senate Appropriations Committee, which would bar state universities “from disqualifying a student from being hired for an employment position due to the student’s failure to provide proof of federal work authorization.”

AB 713 explicitly tells the universities “to treat a specified prohibition in federal law on hiring undocumented noncitizens as inapplicable because that provision does not apply to any branch of state government” (emphasis added).

Though “immigrant rights advocates” claim the UC system has yet to comply with the appeals court decision, UC officials claim the ruling doesn’t “mandate the UC to hire undocumented students,” and that the system already employs students through the DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, program.

UC also has argued as Newsom — that it is bound by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which makes it illegal to hire workers in the country illegally.

As reported by The College Fix last year, the appeals court specifically noted its decision “does not require the University to take any specific action, let alone one that will necessarily place the University community at risk.”

But Ahilan Arulanantham, faculty co-director of the UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, said UC “is required to change its policy” to satisfy the court. He had argued the 1986 law “does not specifically designate government entities as ’employers.’”

“As of now, their policy is literally identical to the policy that the court struck down,” Arulanantham said. “They have to make a change at some point reasonably soon.”

UC’s position also did not sit well with several “undocumented” students.

Diego Castro told the Bruin that his dream “was to always pursue grad school [and] potentially become a professor one day.” But UC Merced asked him for additional documentation after being accepted to grad school, and it ultimately reduced the amount of his “acceptance package” by 80 percent.

“The school had created these disparities and all these unequal practices,” Castro said.

UCLA Education and Information Studies doctoral student Jerusalen Davila (pictured), who served as an “undocumented community council undergraduate student representative” at UC Berkeley according to her Linkedin page, claimed “educational institutions have historically neglected undocumented students.”

She added that UC is “using a lot of language or fear of any federal actions” and is “just avoiding their institutional accountability or responsibility.”

“I have a master’s, and I can’t use it,” said Gomez, who hopes to become a professor. “I may have a PhD and may not be able to use it. It just puts a lot of dreams away or shelved somewhere.”

While Davila said she would like to work at a community college if she had the proper work authorization, these laws mean she has to consider independent contracting jobs after receiving her doctoral degree instead.

“Even before I started the PhD, I knew that if I don’t fix my status by the time I graduate, then I’m going to be back to square one,” Davila said. …

Davila said she hopes California eventually becomes an example of how to best support undocumented students for other states.

Gomez said both AB 713 [a law banning state colleges “from disqualifying students without federal work authorization from campus employment”] and the court’s ruling will, in many ways, define his future.

“What the lawsuit was really about was how they can break these narratives of undocumented students having to prove themselves, and proving that they are exceptional and that we deserve dignity,” Gomez said. “It does hurt, in the mind and the soul.”

Senior legal fellows from both the Center for Immigration Studies Senior and Heritage Foundation had criticized the California court’s ruling.

George Fishman of the former told The College Fix that “in the end, federal courts will rule that IRCA does indeed apply to States as employers, just as Congress intended in 1986.” Heritage’s Zack Smith said “federal law, which trumps any state law to the contrary, prohibits any employer from hiring illegal aliens.”