Out-of-School Immigrant Youth

Laura Hill, Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)
Joseph M. Hayes, Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)

Some 73,000 immigrants ages 13 to 18 live in California but are not enrolled in school. Many more foreign-born young people are beyond school age, but received no education in the United States when they were eligible. A great number of these youth do not attend U.S. schools because they migrated in order to work, and approximately 90 percent are Latino. Youth who are not in school receive few federal and state resources, and their outcomes are worse than those of in-school immigrant youth. One federal program, Migrant Education, serves out of school immigrant youth. Working with data from this program and census data, we examine the following questions: Who are out of school immigrant youth and how are they faring? What are the needs of these youth? What services appear to be related to positive outcomes such as returning to school?