Legal Pathways as Determinants of Incorporation: Previous Undocumented Experience and Intentions to Naturalize Among Immigrants

• In Event: 061 - Regular Session. Immigration to the United States: Trajectories of Incorporation/Classification

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the legal pathway an immigrant takes to lawful permanent residence influences his or her intention to become an American citizen. Using data from the New Immigrant Survey, which provides novel means for estimating different types of previous undocumented experience among permanent residents, this paper make three main contributions: First, I expand existing theories of naturalization to take into account immigrants’ legal histories, which I argue is an underlooked determinant given the high rates of undocumented immigration to the US. Second, while previous research on the stratifying effects of legal status has looked at its effects on social, economic, and health dimensions, I focus on previously undocumented immigrants’ political incorporation prospects. Third, I quantitatively lend support to the assertion that illegality is diversely experienced.
I find that permanent residents who had previously crossed the border without authorization exhibited higher intentions to naturalize than immigrants with no prior history of illegality. On the other hand, permanent residents who had previously become undocumented by violating the terms of their visas did not differ from those with no history of illegality in their attitudes towards naturalization. In the face of a wide range of evidence about the negative social, economic, and health impacts of illegality on immigrants’ integration prospects, this study bears optimistic implications for the future place of formerly undocumented immigrants in the American polity. Individuals who had previously lived in the shadows may be the very ones who most desire to become a part of American political life.

Author

• Amanda Rachel Cheong, Princeton University