Custody dilemma shows how UCLA slights older students

Kim is a policy studies graduate student.

By Paula H. Kim

Students at UCLA are more diverse in terms of age, parental and
marital status than ever before. Yet many of the student services
offered by the administration at UCLA function as though the
student body is still made up of only single, young and childless
students. By pointing out the particulars of my case, I hope to
assist in waking the administration from its slumber by calling for
its increased responsiveness to non-traditional students.

In the policy studies department at UCLA, we are taught
analytical skills that allow us to assess the impact and cost
effectiveness of proposed policies. The hope is to produce policies
that are sustainable, rational and fair. Given this environment, it
is particularly ironic that I find myself caught in the middle
between two existing laws that contradict each other.

The story begins when I first became an international graduate
student at UCLA. I signed a legal document promising to return to
my home country after earning my degree and to financially support
myself and my daughter without public assistance during our stay in
the United States.

Currently, my daughter’s father is suing me for joint
custody. Should he win his case, family law will be in direct
opposition to immigration law. According to four family lawyers I
spoke to, the petitioner, my husband, has a decent chance of being
granted joint custody. They agreed that California family court is
interested in determining custody cases based on the best interests
of the child, which is in itself a noble construct. When this is
done irrespective of the parent’s or child’s
immigration status, however, it becomes an irrational one.

The best interests of the child are defined by such things as
protecting the ongoing relationship between a parent and a child,
and this parental right is in jeopardy only in severe cases such as
child abuse.

I am at a disadvantage in my legal case because I cannot afford
to hire a family lawyer while I am in graduate school. My case is
not covered by publicly funded legal assistance programs, and UCLA
Student Legal Services does not take on disputed family law cases.
UCLA Student Legal Services will, however, cover a student’s
case when a student gets drunk, does something stupid, and gets
sued.

Historically, Student Legal Services at UCLA did provide legal
services for family disputes, but it has changed its policy. I have
hired a non-profit legal firm to advise me, but I must represent
myself in court because the firm does not send lawyers to hearings
based out of the petitioner’s home turf in Orange County.

I could have disputed jurisdiction of Ontario, Canada, law over
California law in my case, but a lawyer estimated a price tag
between $10,000 to $20,000 with an uncertain chance of winning.

Let us be pessimistic or realistic, and say that I lose my bid
to keep sole custody of my daughter. I will have to live in
proximity to the greater Los Angeles area for at least 10 more
years in order to maintain a joint custody agreement with her dad.
(I should mention that my daughter and her dad see each other
regularly, and he is not suing because I deny visitation
rights.)

When my degree and one year of practical training expire, I will
be in a bizarre position of either becoming an undocumented person
in LA or returning to Canada with my daughter, both of which
violate immigration or family law.

As far as I am aware, there is no immigration eligibility status
to stay in the United States based on a joint custody agreement.
One option I am unwilling to consider, ironically the only legal
one besides entering another graduate program, is returning to
Canada without my daughter. Since the last option is out of the
question for me, the contradictions in these two laws could force
me to become either an illegal alien or an abducting mom, neither
of which are appealing options.

We are currently in an age when non-traditional students are
returning to the university at increasing rates. It is difficult to
believe that the university system continues to provide support
services as though all students were young and without
dependents.

For example, UCLA has two to three students on a waiting list
for every student with a day care slot on campus. UCLA does not
collect statistics on students with dependents, so we do not know
how many there are.

Furthermore, the family law policy analysts/lawmakers should
have touched base with the immigration policy analysts/lawmakers
before they institutionalized the contradictions I now find in my
case. I suspect that my situation is not isolated but rather
endemic to many people’s lives.

In the interests of the university, the administration must make
an attempt to provide more inclusive sufficient services that
covers a wider range of students, not just young
undergraduates.