The 'Paper Ceiling' -- Undocumented Youths Face Barriers at the Brink of Adulthood

Fermin was born at the height of El Salvador's civil war 17 years ago. When he was 11, his mother finally saved enough money to bring him to Los Angeles, where she had lived since he was 4 years old.

"She wanted me to have more educational opportunities," Fermin says. "It's the only way out of being low-income."

Fermin has taken advantage of those opportunities. He will graduate from high school this spring at the top of his class. After that, things get more complicated. Along with 65,000 other new graduates nationwide, Fermin will leave high school with a diploma, but without citizenship papers.

Many of the estimated 350,000 undocumented students in California schools came to the state as young children, by no choice of their own. Often they have no other home to return to. Federal legislation has been proposed that would help these youths attend college, and make the road to citizenship easier for some, but it has stalled in Congress, entangled within the larger debate over immigration reform.

So at an age when most teenagers are getting their driver's licenses, working their first jobs and applying to college, young people like Fermin are coming face to face -- often for the first time -- with what it means to grow up without papers.

For Fermin, it means taking four city buses each day to get to school and back -- as an undocumented immigrant, he can't get a driver's license. When Fermin entered the American public school system six years ago, he did not know a word of English. Today, he is preparing for the California Academic Decathlon. He hopes his team will do well -- but even if they do, he won't be joining them at the state competition in Sacramento. Fermin fears that if he travels without papers he could be detained or deported.

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