WASHINGTON, D.C., September 17, 2003—Almost 11 million legal immigrants are now or will soon be eligible for U.S. citizenship, according to a new study released by the nonpartisan Urban Institute on Citizenship Day. Some 7.9 million individuals were eligible to become citizens as of 2002 and 2.7 million more will be able to do so by 2007.
California is home to 2.7 million, or one-third, of those currently eligible to naturalize. The top six states, which include New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey, account for 5.9 million, or 75 percent.
Mexico was the birthplace of 2.3 million eligible immigrants in 2001, 10 times the number from any other country. The leading sources after Mexico were Canada, China, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the former Soviet Union.
The study defines those eligible to naturalize as legal adult immigrants (18 years or older) who have been in the United States at least five years or who have been here for three years and are married to a U.S. citizen. Soon-to-be-eligible immigrants are adult green-card holders who have yet to reach the applicable five- or three-year mark.
"Trends in Naturalization," by Urban Institute researchers Michael Fix, Jeffrey S. Passel, and Kenneth Sucher, uses 2000 Census and 2002 Current Population Survey data to reveal changes in the number of naturalized citizens and the rate of naturalization. Also covered are the size and characteristics of the pool of immigrants now or soon to be eligible to naturalize.
The study includes 2002 naturalized and eligible populations for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
"Citizenship is the gateway for immigrants to full membership and political participation in U.S. society," says Fix. "Its importance has risen since the mid-1990s, when welfare and immigration reform based access to public benefits and some rights more and more on citizenship."
Michael Fix is director of the Immigration Studies Program at the Urban Institute. Jeffrey Passel is a demographer and principal research associate in the Institute's Population Studies Center. Kenneth Sucher is a former research associate at the Institute.
Historic Flows
During the 1980s and 1990s, the United States witnessed the largest influx of immigrants in the nation's history, with about 24 million people entering the country. Fix, Passel, and Sucher estimate the foreign-born population more than tripled in 30 years, reaching 34 million by 2002. This figure includes 11.3 million naturalized citizens, 12.2 million legal permanent residents, over 9 million undocumented immigrants, and 1.6 million temporary residents.
For the first time in more than 25 years, the number of naturalized immigrants grew, from 6.5 million in 1990 to 7.5 million in the mid-1990s to 11.3 million in 2002. The share of legal immigrants who had naturalized increased to 49 percent in 2002 after a steep downward trend-from 64 percent in 1970 to 39 percent in 1996.
Propelling the surge in naturalization, the researchers surmise, is eligible immigrants' response to anti-immigration legislation, such as Proposition 187 in California and the 1996 welfare and illegal-immigration reforms enacted by Congress. Fix, Passel, and Sucher also point to a large increase in the number of immigrants eligible to naturalize, including nearly all of the 2.7 million undocumented residents who were legalized under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act and became eligible for citizenship in the mid-1990s. Also, many countries, such as Mexico, eased restrictions on dual nationality.
The Changing Face of Naturalization
Compared to recently naturalized citizens, the eligible population has more limited English skills, less education, and lower incomes:
- Sixty percent of the eligible group and 67 percent of those approaching eligibility are limited English proficient, versus 52 percent of the recently naturalized.
- Twenty-five percent of eligible adults have less than a ninth-grade education, compared with only 9 percent of the recently naturalized population.
- Forty-one percent of those eligible to naturalize have incomes under 200 percent of the federal poverty level ($36,200 for a family of 4 in 2002), compared with 28 percent of the recently naturalized.
- Twenty-eight percent of the eligible immigrants, Mexicans represent only 9 percent of the recently naturalized. Asians make up 27 percent of the eligible pool but 43 percent of recently naturalized citizens.
The researchers found wide variations in naturalization rates for immigrants from different regions and countries. In 1995, only 19 percent of Mexicans eligible to naturalize had done so, compared with 66 percent of immigrants from Europe and Canada. By 2001, the corresponding figures were 34 percent and 65 percent. The naturalization rate for other Latin Americans jumped from 40 to 58 percent. For Asian immigrants, the rate climbed from 56 to 67 percent.
"If the goal is to promote integration of immigrants through naturalization, we need to look carefully at the characteristics of the eligible pool. They suggest the value of expanding opportunities for language and civics instruction and approaching changes to the citizenship examination cautiously," says Passel. "One option worth further study would be offering intensive language and civics courses as an alternative to taking the citizenship test."
"Trends in Naturalization," by Michael Fix, Jeffrey S. Passel, and Kenneth Sucher, is available at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=310847. It was funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. Additional Urban Institute research on immigration issues can be found at http://urban.org/r/immigration.cfm.
The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation.
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