It’s been almost a year since academic workers at UC San Diego signed a new contract with the administration.
Now, five international postdoctoral researchers who say their jobs were terminated over the holidays face the threat of deportation.
Since the scholars are here on visas, they may be forced to leave the country unless they get their jobs back.
Yu Gao and Suresh Madheswaran are two of them, just weeks away from being forced out of the U.S. with the real possibility of leaving their family behind.
“It just feels very challenging to live separately from my husband. We love each other so much," Gao said.
Madheswaran is also in a dire situation.
“I have a 30-day grace period, within these days I have to leave this country. After having a newborn baby, without a passport without anything — how am I going to take my baby back? Am I going to be separated?" Madheswaran said. He and his wife are from India here on a J-1 exchange visitor visa.
Gao is from China on a student visa.
Both are allowed to remain in the country as long as they are employed in their post-doctoral academic jobs at UC San Diego.
Madheswaran and Gao, who are UAW Post Doc Local 5810 members, believe their contracts require at least a two-year assignment. Gao has only been a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for a year. She was told there’s no more funding for her position, something she says is not true.
“I was informed there are still four to five months of funding left. But my supervisor refused to use it to renew my contract or to give me a temporary position so I can have some time or grace period to find my next position," she said.
Her husband is also on a student visa finishing up a Ph.D. program at the University of Delaware. He has been working remotely from San Diego and will remain if his wife is forced to return to China.
They both will have to leave student housing by the end of the month.
Madheswaran has a 2-month-old baby with his wife. The couple would have to return to their home in India. But, the infant is an American citizen without a passport or travel visa. While Madheswaran was on paternity leave, he says he was told he no longer had a job because of a lack of funding for his cancer research position.
“There is no transparency between me and my boss or with the university," he said.
The university’s administration has ultimate authority over the fate of academic workers, but postdoctoral scholars are under the direct supervision of their principal investigator. What they say goes and the university follows with few exceptions.
Three other international postdoctoral scholars claim they are facing deportation too. In December, UAW union members protested outside the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center where Madheswaran is a researcher, and three-time cancer survivor himself.
“It’s our view that the university really doesn’t want to implement this contract that they signed. Our position is that we’re going to continue to fight and make sure that every worker gets the rights that they deserve," said Jeanean Naqvi, UAW Local 5810 head steward who is also a postdoctoral scholar.
KPBS reached out to UC San Diego for comment on the terminations. A spokesperson said they would get back with a response on Thursday. However they did not.
