For the past year, Asul Garcia-Melendrez has struggled to find work. The 22-year-old graduated from CSU Monterey Bay with a degree in humanities and communication. Since then, she’s applied to over 40 jobs.
“I graduated last May,” she said, “I've been trying to look for work since then. It's been very difficult.”
Despite her credentials and persistence, Garcia-Melendrez, who is undocumented, is not legally allowed to work in the country.
Since 2001, California has passed a series of laws that have made it easier for undocumented students to attend college — and that trend is continuing. But even as the state paves a way to access higher education, the support drops off when it comes time to apply that education to the workforce. And federal laws create even more challenges.
“We're all told about the American Dream, right?” Garcia-Melendrez said, “And once you get here, it all unfolds and you're like, ‘what is going on?’”
Garcia-Melendrez’s family emigrated from Sinaloa, Mexico to California when she was 5 years old. She remembers thinking they crossed the border around June 18, 2007. That arrival date would end up being the reason she couldn’t apply for DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Former president Barack Obama created DACA in 2012 as a temporary stopgap measure to protect undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children from deportation. Eligible applicants were able to travel, go to college, and obtain work permits as long as they renewed their status every two years. The program initially protected more than 800,000 immigrants — but only those who crossed the border before June 15, 2007.
“Just a mere three days made a huge difference,” Garcia-Melendrez said.
The number of people in Garcia-Melendrez’s position is likely to grow. Ever since former president Donald Trump tried to terminate DACA in 2017, the program has been through the legal wringer. Currently, DACA is not accepting any new applications, only renewals. And those come with a steep price tag — $495 every two years.
“DACA was meant to be temporary,” said Denea Joseph, a DACA recipient from Belize and national entrepreneurship manager at Immigrants Rising, a San Francisco-based organization that works to expand opportunities for immigrants. “It was meant to be a place filler until we could work out a pathway to citizenship for the 11.5 million undocumented people that call this country home.”
Although it’s been more than a decade since Obama created DACA, a more permanent pathway to citizenship is still nowhere close to getting through Congress. And in California, undocumented students continue to face obstacles while in college.
In January, the University of California Board of Regents voted to table a policy that would have let undocumented students work on UC campuses, arguing the policy would violate a 1986 federal law. As POLITICO reported, the Biden administration urged the regents not to approve the policy.
In response to the Board of Regents decision, Assemblymember David Alvarez (D-San Diego) introduced a bill that would let all public college and university students in California hold campus jobs, regardless of immigration status. The bill is currently working its way through the state Assembly’s higher education committee.
In the meantime, existing federal law does offer some narrow pathways for undocumented immigrants to pursue work as independent contractors. A big part of Joseph’s work at Immigrants Rising is educating people about those options.
“We've been able to see folks who are mental health professionals, folks who are therapists…folks who are accountants,” she said. “There's an array of industries that you're able to participate in. And it's supported by the education that you acquire in a college or university setting.”
But ultimately, undocumented college graduates will keep struggling to find work unless something changes at the federal level.
“We are unfortunately getting further and further away from a pathway to citizenship,” Joseph said. “And I could only imagine, dependent on how the presidential election outcome looks, that we're going to get further away from what we currently see, which is already so little.”
Asul Garcia-Melendrez, the CSUMB graduate, is also keeping an eye on the presidential election. She’s worried about the prospect of another Trump presidency.
“There’s always that fear of, what if you get deported?” she said.
Despite that fear, she keeps applying to jobs.
“I was so close to getting a job working with kids with autism,” Garcia-Melendrez said. “...I was kind of heartbroken because they told me, you know, welcome to the team. And then a few hours later…I asked if they accept people that are undocumented, and they said that they couldn't work with me.”
She says she’ll keep trying, with the hope that one day either the laws will change or someone will take a chance on her.
CSU Monterey Bay holds the FCC license for 90.3 KAZU. The station is located on the university’s campus.
