Edward Kissam / commentary
February 5, 2013

Ed Kissam photo

Ed Kissam

President Obama'due south announcement of a new immigration program, "deferred activeness for childhood arrivals" (DACA), last June makes 2022 a year of promise for undocumented immigrant youth and young adults in California. Notwithstanding, a key factor in determining whether their dreams become reality will be their ability to enroll in adult schools and community college programs.

Modeled on the DREAM Human action, DACA provides undocumented immigrants who came to this country equally children (before historic period xvi), and who were less than 31 years old when the program was announced in 2012, relief from the threat of deportation. The program provides them piece of work authorisation, an opportunity to move out of the shadows of twilight employment into mainstream jobs. Nationally, deferred action can immediately do good near 1.3 1000000 immigrant youth and immature adults who are fifteen years of age or older. About 305,000 of them alive in California, the nation'due south largest immigrant state. As of December. 13, 2012, some 368,000 young people had applied for deferred action, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) continues to procedure applications quite quickly and approve most.

Applicants are required to take at to the lowest degree a loftier school caste or GED or exist "in school" to qualify. Simply many undocumented immigrant youth exercise poorly in school, and an estimated 43 percent of the potential historic period-qualified DACA applicants haven't graduated or secured a GED. To qualify, they will need to enroll in an developed educational activity plan for English as a Second Language courses or bones skills, vocational or workforce grooming preparation. In rural areas, their need for adult educational activity is even college. For example, estimates from the National Agricultural Worker Survey suggest that 80 percent of California'due south 21,000 DACA-eligible farmworkers did not graduate from high school or get a GED.

All the same the country system's adult education service capacity—at both customs colleges and adult schools—has been cut almost in half in recent years. The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Function reported a 38 per centum decrease in non-credit form sections between 2008-2009 and 2011-2012, and the California Department of Education estimates a 50 per centum driblet in enrollment during the aforementioned menstruation. This means there is an adult education emergency in California. More than than 140,000 immigrant youth and young adults must enroll in an adult education program in order to authorize to work legally at the very betoken when capacity is already well below demand and when employers' needs for a skilled, diverse workforce is once once more growing due to the economic recovery. An analysis past the Legislative Annotator'south Office argues that it would now actually be viable to start with the long overdue process of  bringing adult instruction systems upwardly to date.

It would be ironic if California, the nation's leader in developing immigrant-friendly teaching policy, assuasive undocumented students in-state tuition (AB 540 in 2001) and making undocumented students eligible for country-funded college assistance beginning in Jan of this year (AB 131), were to slam the door of opportunity at a point when we can await a surge of demand for adult education courses from those who never managed to consummate high schoolhouse. Failure to make space for those who desperately need access would non only hurt young immigrant adults, just besides California employers who would employ tens of thousands of newly legal workers who might, via developed learning programs, build the workplace skills they need to have on increasing levels of responsibility.

Budget constraints are a reality. But DACA applicants who resume their interrupted didactics past enrolling in an adult instruction grade and continue onward to complete a form of study leading to certification or an AA degree will probably see firsthand increases of about $12,000 in their annual earnings. This translates into increased income taxation acquirement for California, which will in plow offset the small-scale costs of making available more than adult basic teaching, ESL, and not-credit community college courses to set up students for careers.

This twelvemonth is 1 of opportunity for California state authorities and educators to take practical steps to make the vision of "lifelong learning" a reality. The strength of California's economic system, the vitality of its social and cultural life and the time to come of civic life in the state rests on fully integrating immigrants into order. Where amend to start than by expanding the adult teaching organisation chapters so undocumented youth and young adults can authorize for deferred activeness?

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Edward Kissam is a researcher who has worked on bug related to farmworkers and social programs serving immigrants for more than than 30 years. His research on the early impacts of the Immigration Reform and Control Act was published as Working Poor: Farmworkers in the The states. He has worked as research analyst for the Adult Instruction Found of Research and Planning, developed curriculum for the state's Latino Developed Teaching Services projection, and authored the chapter on adult education in the textbook Latinos and Public Policy in California. Ed is a contributing editor for the Periodical of Latino and Latin American Studies, a volunteer adviser to the Centro Binacional de Desarollo Indigena Oaxaqueno, and currently serves every bit a trustee of the Werner-Kohnstamm Family Fund.

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