The Post-DACA Generation is Here
Most of This Year’s 100,000 Undocumented High School Graduates Are Currently Ineligible for the Policy
A new report finds that an estimated 100,000 undocumented students will graduate from high school in 2022, with most of them not eligible for DACA. The new FWD.us report, published in May 2022, The Post-DACA Generation is Here, explains how DACA’s unavailability impacts undocumented youth in the U.S. The report estimates that 100,000 undocumented students will graduate from high school each year for the next three years and only about 25 percent will be eligible for immigration protections through DACA. The high school class of 2022 will be among the first cohorts where many undocumented students will be ineligible for DACA because they entered the U.S. after June 15, 2007.
The inability to obtain DACA means students are not able to legally work in the U.S., further limiting their educational and career opportunities. The report finds that more than four in ten (43 percent) of this year’s undocumented graduates live in one of 28 states where they are denied full tuition equity. In these states, around 43,000 of this year’s undocumented graduates will be prohibited from fully accessing in-state tuition rates. The report also finds that more than 600,000 K-12 undocumented students are currently enrolled in U.S. schools.
You can find the report here. FWD.us also developed the following state-level estimates of undocumented high school students graduating in 2022.
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Source: FWD.us analysis of augmented American Community Survey 2019 data. State estimates based on the distribution of undocumented children in school age 15 in 2019. See report methodology on how national estimates of 2022 undocumented high school graduates were calculated.
Note: Due to different methodologies, the state-level numbers in this report differ from state-level data published in 2019 regarding the number of undocumented students graduating high school each year. This difference is explained by this report’s specific focus on the distribution of undocumented children in school aged 15 in 2019, compared to the other data’s focus on a large age-band to determine undocumented high school graduates. The data may also reflect the potential shift of undocumented individuals from more traditional states to less traditional destinations.
