California Encourages Undocumented Students to Go to College. But Some Are Losing Hope

At Folsom Lake College’s main administrative building, a flyer on the wall tells undocumented students, “You can still go to college in California even with the current political climate.”

“Keep going,” it says. “You are not alone.”

{snip}

California has become both a model and an exception nationally for the opportunities it offers undocumented students to earn a degree and enter its skilled workforce. In recent years, the state has pioneered programs that pay undocumented students to volunteer at organizations relevant to their interests, offer grants to immigrant entrepreneurs and otherwise find alternatives to federal work authorization requirements that in many states can limit people’s ability to pursue careers.

{snip}

Yet because of its track record in supporting undocumented students, the left-leaning state is now enmeshed in a legal battle with the Trump administration over policies that make college more accessible, with the federal government arguing that by helping undocumented students, California is discriminating against U.S. citizens. At the same time, since last summer Californians have experienced sweeping enforcement raids that have sowed fear in immigrant neighborhoods across the state.

Meanwhile, state policymakers’ innovations to support immigrant students have proven more difficult to execute than to dream up, leaving many undocumented students struggling to see the point of pursuing higher education instead of staying home to try to protect their families, in what experts warn could lead to a generational loss of talent.

California has more undocumented college students than any other state and a long history of supporting them. In 2001, it became the second U.S. state to offer most undocumented Californians the same in-state tuition as other residents, and a decade later, it was the first to provide state-based financial aid for those students, through the California Dream Act.

Since then, lawmakers have continued enacting policies to encourage college access for undocumented Californians, including by covering community college enrollment fees, opening up eligibility for student loans and requiring schools to have specialized staff who can guide undocumented scholars.

But despite those efforts, some recent signs suggest fewer undocumented students have been applying for financial aid and enrolling at four-year universities in recent years. Last academic year, there were 35,949 applications, down from nearly 50,000 just five years earlier, according to the California Student Aid Commission. And researchers found that, between 2016 and 2022, the number of low-income undocumented students enrolling at the University of California and California State University systems dropped by half.

Experts and educators attribute the declines in part to the Covid pandemic and to aggressive immigration enforcement during President Donald Trump’s first and second terms. But they also point to the fact that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that deprioritized young immigrants for deportation and granted them employment authorization so they could legally work post-college, is no longer available to first-time applicants, both because it only applies to people who have resided in the U.S. since 2007 and because of Republican-led efforts to block its implementation.

At the same time, the Department of Justice has sued California and 16 other states over their tuition support for undocumented scholars, which policy experts say is making families more hesitant to have their children pursue a college degree in case tuition support disappears partway through their college careers. And even California’s laws meant to safeguard and encourage undocumented scholars — for instance, legislation passed last year that requires colleges and universities to inform students, faculty, staff and others of confirmed immigration enforcement sightings on campus — have rarely gone according to plan, as the policies lack the oversight and financial investment to be consistent and well-done on the ground.

{snip}

The federal government’s anti-immigrant agenda has taken a toll, separating families while depriving the U.S. of homegrown talent, educators and experts say. By one count, at least 666 children in California have been detained during Trump’s second term, and 61 percent of them have been deported — a drastic uptick in deportations of young people from 8 percent under the Biden administration.

{snip}

D.V., a DACA recipient who works for a California-based nonprofit that supports first-generation college students, said he has known undocumented scholars nationally who have been deported or who need help with requests like registering their degrees in their home countries as they prepare to leave the U.S. (He is being referred to by his initials to protect the young people he serves.) He also fields questions from students about why they should attend college at all when they can’t even get a Social Security number. And while he has talking points — a degree from a U.S. university is valid and prestigious anywhere in the world, and a college diploma may make one eligible for an employment-based visa down the line — he struggles with how to answer as he wrestles with similar insecurities about his own future.

{snip}

But at many universities and organizations, the campus resources to help these students succeed have largely gone underground, as administrators have started self-censoring to avoid funding cuts from the federal government or legal action from the Trump administration and right-wing groups.

Education professionals have noticed that scholarship providers are deleting language on their websites and in their materials explicitly saying that they accept applications from undocumented scholars. Nonprofits are doing “communications audits” — changing their mission statements, messaging and language on their websites to get rid of words like “Dreamers” that they worry are too politically charged. Recruiters for programs that help kids reach college are deleting presentation slides saying undocumented students can apply.

{snip}