Friend,
While most high schoolers graduating this year are looking forward to celebrating with their friends and family, there are approximately 100,000 undocumented high school students graduating to a wave of fear and uncertainty. This will also happen each year for the next three years.
But Congress has a chance to help these 100,000 undocumented high school graduates who will not be eligible for DACA benefits. This is happening because most graduates entered the U.S. after June 15, 2007, the eligibility date for DACA. Add to this attempts by the Trump Administration to end DACA, combined with court orders interrupting access to new prospective DACA applicants, which only allowed a short window for new applicants to apply and largely excluded young people. Congress should act quickly to provide permanent, long-term protections.
Our team penned a brand new blog post detailing what’s truly at stake. See below for a preview of this important deep dive — and then click here to read the full piece and share with your networks.
Thank you,
FWD.us
BLOG POST
The post-DACA generation is here: Most of this year’s 100,000 undocumented high school graduates are ineligible for the policy
Under current rules and court action, DACA is unavailable to most undocumented high school graduates. Absent Congress’s passing immigration reform for Dreamers, most undocumented graduates cannot legally enter the workforce, even if the DACA policy were open for new applicants. Without more states passing tuition equity legislation, many undocumented graduates also cannot access affordable higher education.
PREVIEW
FWD.us estimates that some 100,000 undocumented young people will graduate from high school this spring. Part of the larger 2.8 million-strong Dreamer population, these undocumented students came to the U.S. as children, and have spent most of their lives in this country. With more than 600,000 K-12 undocumented students enrolled in U.S. schools, hundreds of thousands of future high school graduates will continue to face limited options for their futures without immigration relief. In fact, FWD.us estimates that at least 100,000 undocumented students will graduate from U.S. high schools each year for at least the next three years.
