"Young Lives on Hold" -- New Report from College Board Makes Case for DREAM Act

College Board Policy Brief Supports Comprehensive Resolution to Plight of Undocumented Students

‘Young Lives on Hold: The College Dreams of Undocumented Students’ — Why We Need the DREAM Act - 04/21/09
In Spanish - Press release in Spanish (.pdf/44K)

NEW YORK — More than 65,000 undocumented students who have lived in the U.S. for five years or more will graduate from high school this spring. For their native-born classmates, graduation represents a rite of passage into adulthood. For too many undocumented students, it’s a dead end. That is the urgent message in a compelling report released today by the College Board at a briefing on Capitol Hill.

In “Young Lives on Hold: The College Dreams of Undocumented Students,” Roberto G. Gonzales, assistant professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Washington in Seattle, makes the case to Congress and the American people that the untenable status of these students is a humanitarian and civil rights issue, as well as an economic one, and debunks the myths that undocumented students limit opportunities for others.

The report contends that the initial investment in the K-12 education of these students, mandated by the Supreme Court in 1982, is lost if we continue to curb their ability to contribute to society after they graduate from high school. Without educating these students to their full potential, the report suggests, we are wasting their talent and imposing economic and emotional costs on undocumented students and on U.S. society as a whole.

Read rest of College Board announcement