LONG BEACH, Calif. – Cal State Long Beach student body president Jose Salazar gets his tuition for free, as well as a $300 per month meal plan, despite his status and an illegal immigrant.

He applied for president Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to gain a work permit and avoid deportation, but hasn’t yet heard if he qualifies.

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But as he waits, Salazar is campaigning to collect a $1,200 a month stipend from the school for his work as president and in the college’s Dream Center for undocumented students. He can’t currently collect the money as his predecessors have because he’s in the country illegally, and he thinks that’s not fair, NBC Los Angeles reports.

The pay for student body president is considered compensation, which is illegal to receive without a social security number. Salazar told the Board of Control for Associated Students, Inc. he believes students who are breaking the law deserve the same payments as any other president, and is advocating to make the compensation a scholarship to get around the law, according to the Long Beach Press Telegram.

“I feel like we’re currently, as ASI, not being equal to everyone,” Salazar said.

Salazar in an aerospace engineering major who previously served as an ASI senator and received $640 a semester in “director’s fees” which are not considered compensation and he wants to keep it coming. Salazar proposed a bill to allow students at California State University schools and community colleges who serve as presidents to be paid through grants, scholarships, fee waivers, or expense reimbursements, but ASI executive director Richard Haller told the student body there’s a reason the system is set up the way it is.

The president position requires the student to work 25 hours per week on a variety of assignments, like attending numerous meetings of the Board of Control, the Academic Senate and the University Student Union Board of Trustees, and structuring the position as an employee-employer relationship ensures they fulfill their duties, Haller said.

Haller said that before the university used the paid fellowship arrangement past presidents failed to follow through with their duties.

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“Another issue is whether turning the fellowship into a scholarship would limit the pool of presidential candidates,” the Press Telegram reports. “Since it’s a scholarship, students elected president may lose out on other financial aid available to them because they already have their tuition waived and are receiving money for service as president.”

ASI dean of students Jeff Klaus told the news site he informed Salazar “that if he’s not DACA-certified or without the policy changing, he’s volunteering” as president.

“As an advocate for students, I wanted to make sure that it was clear to him that here are the two options, and if those aren’t in place, in a sense, you would be volunteering, and are you comfortable with that?” Klaus told the student newspaper, the Daily 49er. “He said, ‘Okay, I’m okay with volunteering.’”

Salazar said he didn’t file for DACA status until recently to prove a point.

“I was about to apply for [DACA] in December, but I chose to not run with my DACA because I wanted to prove a point to the students,” Salazar said. “If someone who’s undocumented can do it, so can everyone else. I wanted to empower the undocumented community, because once you have DACA … you are temporarily documented.”

Interestingly, Miriam Hernandez, the ASI vice president, had no problem receiving her fellowship money because she completed her DACA application well before taking office.

ASI Treasurer Wendy Lewis has advocated against changing the fellowship to a scholarship as Salazar suggests because of both the work requirement and because Salazar’s reluctance to file the DACA paperwork reflects on his character, she told the Daily 49er.

“Someone said this to me and it really rung a bell: ‘Someone who would drag their feet to do the paperwork they need for themselves, what kind of term do you think their (sic) going to have for a corporation?’” Lewis said. “I need you to be together yourself in order to have this corporation together. It really is a reflection of the type of leadership that we chose to have here.

“That’s what I’m fearful for as well if we do change this policy: if we’re okay-ing someone not being accountable to their own personal things that they have to be done before coming into office, this is something he should’ve done before he was even thinking about running, then it’s definitely something that should set off an alarm to someone. Do you really want this person to run a corporation, a multi-million dollar corporation, as a CEO?”

Lewis also pointed out that only about 2 percent of Cal State Long Beach students are undocumented, and many of those students can acquire DACA status.

“I know (Salazar’s) push is to be more inclusive, but … essentially we would be changing this policy for .05 percent of students who may or may not choose to run,” she said.