UAW 4121: UW admin must support immigrant academic workers

UAW 4121 is calling on UW to proactively defend immigrant academic students workers and uphold collectively-bargained worker protections

SEATTLE, WA (October 1, 2025) — In the face of federal actions targeting non-U.S. citizen students and academic workers, the union representing academic student employees, postdocs, and researchers at the University of Washington is calling on university administration to take steps to protect and defend the thousands of immigrant student workers at the university. In a letter, UAW Local 4121 lays out escalating attacks on non-U.S. citizen members of the UW community as one aspect of the federal administration’s multi-pronged attack on higher education. 

The Trump administration has targeted immigrant students — including those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) — with visa revocations, detentions, and deportations, often without warning or due process. The union notes that 1,300 international students and recent graduates on over 210 campuses had their legal status changed by the State Department in recent months, including 23 at the University of Washington. While those students have had their authorizations reinstated, the administration’s chaotic immigration policies and stated desire to dismantle higher ed institutions leaves international students and academic workers in uncertainty. 

UAW 4121 Academic workers and supporters marching for a fair contract in 2024.

UAW Local 4121 members are urging the university to take specific steps: ensure and publicly affirm continued enrollment for non-citizen students affected by visa issues, work permit issues, detention, or deportation; ensure that all funding and appointment commitments are honored; provide legal assistance and cover all legal costs incurred by immigration-related crises; and ensure continued access to housing, healthcare and expand emergency aid resources.

Beyond these actions to keep academic workers whole, the union is calling on the university to establish a task force to ensure immigrant student workers and advocates are heard in decision making; to make Know Your Rights trainings available and mandatory to all students, staff, and faculty; and to refuse to involve campus police in enforcement of immigration policy, among other demands. 

Academic workers are also elevating the rights and protections they’ve secured through their collective bargaining agreement and calling on the University to uphold those commitments.

“As a union of academic workers, including thousands of us who are non-US citizens, we reaffirm our rights enshrined in our collective bargaining agreement, including on Immigration Status and Work Authorization and appointment security,” reads the letter. “Additionally, our CBAs guarantee our rights to a safe working environment that protect us from discrimination on the basis of immigration status or citizenship. We call on the University to uphold the hard fought contractual protections that international scholars and workers have won through organizing, and take proactive steps to support non-citizen workers that make UW work.”

UAW Local 4121 is encouraging all union supporters and concerned community members to sign on to their letter to university administration, in solidarity with thousands of non-U.S. citizen academic workers.

TAKE A STAND: sign the UAW Local 4121 letter today.