The Road to Citizenship: What Naturalization Means for Immigrants and the United States

The Road to Citizenship

The Road to Citizenship

What Naturalization Means for Immigrants and the United States

Sofya Aptekar

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Aptekar, Sofya, 1979–

The road to citizenship : what naturalization means for immigrants and the United States / Sofya Aptekar.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978–0–8135–6954–3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–8135–6953–6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–8135–6955–0 (e-book)

1.  Citizenship—United States. 2. Naturalization—United States. 3. Immigrants—United States. I. Title.

JK1759.A58 2015

323.6'230973—dc232014021723

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2015 by Sofya Aptekar

All rights reserved

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To Ruslan Yuki

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Roads to Citizenship

Chapter 2. Citizenship and Inequality

Chapter 3. Voices of Immigrants

Chapter 4. Citizenship Ceremonies

Chapter 5. Welcoming and Defining

Chapter 6. Naturalization in Theory and Practice

Appendix

Notes

References

Index

About the Author

Figures

Figure 2.1. Number of immigrants naturalized in the United Stastes from 1970 to 2010

Figure 2.2. Percentage naturalized among foreign born, 1970 to 2010

Figure 2.3. Percentage naturalized among immigrants by level of education

Figure 2.4. Percentage naturalized by year and level of education, excluding immigrants from Mexico and Central America

Figure 2.5. Percentage naturalized among immigrants in the United States by detailed level of education, 2011

Figure 2.6. Percentage naturalized by income

Figure 2.7. Race/ethnicity and percentage naturalized

Figure 2.8. Percentage naturalized by major country of origin

Tables

Table 1.1. Question bank for civics and history exam administered at citizenship interviews by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Table 3.1. Respondent characteristics

Table 3.2. Reasons for naturalizing

Table A.1. Selected results of logistic regressions predicting citizenship status of immigrants

Acknowledgments

The idea for this book was born out of conversations with my dear friend and colleague, Sharon Bzostek, who first suggested that I investigate immigrant naturalization after hearing the account of my own experiences acquiring American citizenship. Many kind and thoughtful individuals helped my research and writing along the way. But there would be no book without the dozens of immigrants who graciously answered my questions at what was undoubtedly an exhausting and nerve-racking point in their lives. I am thankful for their help in understanding the naturalization process, as well as for the help of Shawn Saucier, formerly of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, who opened door after door during my fieldwork.

The Sociology Department at Princeton University served as my intellectual home while I collected and analyzed data for this book. I am deeply thankful to Robert Wuthnow for providing frequent feedback on both research and early writing, as well as for his unfailing kindness and support. Doug Massey’s trust in my insights and interests as a sociologist gave me confidence to pursue this project in the way I wanted to, even though it was not initially obvious that my approaches would pay off. I was extremely fortunate to have the help of Irene Bloemraad at UC Berkeley, the foremost expert on citizenship. Irene provided brilliantly insightful comments at every stage of research, writing, and publication. I must thank Paul DiMaggio for first sparking my interest in the sociology of culture and to Patricia Fernandez-Kelly for her loyal support and astute and broad-ranging observations. While at Princeton, my work was funded by the Sociology Department, the Office of Population Research, the University Center for Human Values, the Program in American Studies, the Center for Canadian Studies, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Center for Migration and Development, and the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. I greatly benefited from the administrative support provided by Melanie Adams and Nancy Cannuli.

The initial daily grind of analysis and writing took place in the warm company of my wonderful colleagues at Princeton. Pierre Kremp and Cristina Mora served as an ever-present sounding board whose presence I sorely miss now that the three of us are scattered across the globe. In pushing me and pointing out what was too obvious and what was not obvious enough, they have helped build the foundations of this book. My analysis also benefited from many conversations with Leslie Hinkson and Rania Salem. In the later stages of writing, I could not have done without the help of Shannon Gleason and Helen Marrow.

I finished the book while working as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, which was a tremendous opportunity to gain a global perspective on immigration and diversity and to learn about citizenship regimes across the world. I am grateful to Steve Vertovec for his support and the opportunity to access the stimulating international environment of migration scholars at the Institute. I must also thank the brilliant migration scholars at the City University of New York Graduate Center, who pushed me to elaborate my arguments and consider the big picture during my stint as a visiting researcher.

Some results of the research presented in this manuscript have appeared as Naturalization Ceremonies and the Role of Immigrants in the American Nation, Citizenship Studies 16(7) (2012): 937–952; and Citizenship Status and Patterns of Inequality in the United States and Canada, Social Science Quarterly 95(2) (2014): 343–359. The manuscript benefited greatly from the comments of two anonymous reviewers and a reader, as well as the generous guidance of Rutgers University Press editor Peter Mickulas. Much of what makes sense about the book is due to them, and the responsibility for what does not is entirely mine. I would like to underscore my debt to Luis Plascencia for his close reading of several versions of this manuscript, his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of American citizenship, and especially his generosity in supporting the work of a junior colleague.

Lastly but most importantly, I have to thank my family for their support of this project and my career. Thanks to Yuki and EJ for being great kids. Thanks to my siblings, Bella Aptekar and Mike Aptekar, for the logistical help that made my work possible. Mike fixed and refixed cars that took me to field sites and laptops that I used for writing and analysis, while Bella read multiple drafts and contributed countless hours of babysitting. Adam Wilson read and edited more than anyone else, but it is his love and friendship for which I am most grateful.

Introduction

This boundary between lawful immigrants and citizens is the line of greatest intimacy but also of most pointed exclusion between outsider and insider. What the United States does with this line tells us most about what it means to be a nation of immigrants.

—Hiroshi Motomura, Americans in Waiting

A Story of Naturalization

In April 2000, I became an American citizen. I sat in my assigned seat in the center of a large auditorium in downtown Brooklyn, in a crowd of about four hundred other immigrants. Together, we followed directions to stand and sit, recite the words of the Oath of Allegiance, and sing the national anthem. The letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) specified business clothing, and I had borrowed a blazer for the occasion. Outside, it was a chilly overcast morning, but inside there were no windows and the yellow lights were dim. The speakers on stage paced around with a tinny microphone, trying to elicit enthusiasm from the audience. A female immigration official, feeling that our reaction to her Good morning was inadequate, shouted I can’t hear you! and the crowd of immigrants thundered with a louder response. A Middle Eastern man next to me appeared thrilled, and kept turning toward his neighbors with a happy grin.

Soon it was over, and immigration agents fanned out to distribute naturalization certificates, the proof of our new American citizenship. Mine is buried deep in my filing cabinet at home. It is slightly larger than a standard piece of paper, and has been folded into uneven thirds. An unflattering picture of my teenage self looks to the side in three-quarters profile, surrounded by an ornate black-and-white border. The Great Seal of the United States, with a bald eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch, is at the center in light green. Over the eagle are words stating that I have been admitted as a citizen. Above my picture are my date of birth, sex, height, marital status, and country of former nationality. A few years after receiving it, I sent my naturalization certificate to the State Department. It came back in the mail along with a crisp blue American passport, whose blank pages seemed instantaneously to inspire wanderlust.

Like many other child immigrants, I would have become an American citizen automatically when my parents naturalized. But in the years during which their applications were being processed, I turned eighteen and had to reapply on my own. Trying to remember what motivated me all these years later, I recall thinking about the upcoming presidential elections in which I could now participate and about the countries to which I could travel without a visa. I did not experience a sense of loss, being essentially stateless: my original country of citizenship, the Soviet Union, was no longer on the map. Neither did I feel that this was a momentous occasion, as some would I argue I should have felt. In my mind, I was already American; naturalization simply made it official.

The four hundred of us immigrants who became citizens in that ceremony were a drop in the ocean of the 886,000 who became citizens in the United States that year through the process of naturalization. This number has fluctuated over the past two decades, from a low of 240,000 in 1992 to over a million in 1996 and again in 2008 (USDHS 2013). This book is about these people, about the process of becoming a citizen, what it means for immigrants, and what it means for the United States. I argue that naturalization is more important than ever, and that we must change the way it works to ensure a more equal and democratic society.

Why Citizenship Matters

Citizenship acquisition among immigrants is a matter of urgency for immigrants themselves and the nation that hosts them. A constellation of recent policies has eroded the rights of immigrants who are not citizens.¹ The number of immigrants deported each year has grown from 165,000 in 2002 to close to 400,000 in 2011, aided by deportation goals and agency quotas under the Obama administration (USDHS 2011).² Among the deported are not only undocumented immigrants³ and violent criminals, but also those whose legal status is stripped because of minor brushes with the law decades prior. The latest upsurge of harsh state and local measures that began with California’s Proposition 187 in 1993 turned into a groundswell ten years later, creating a hostile environment for immigrants across the country. We are in the midst of what some observers have termed the War on Immigrants. For immigrants, acquisition of citizenship status provides a measure of security from this encroachment on their rights. Given the escalation of harsh policies and attitudes, the gulf between citizens and everyone else is widening, and it is becoming ever more urgent for immigrants to have access to citizenship.

Citizenship protects immigrants against deportation.⁴ But more generally, naturalization also inducts immigrants into the full protection of civil liberties available to citizens, making them more or less equal to native-born citizens. Although they cannot become president or vice president, they can vote and run for other political offices. In fact, naturalized citizens have served in very high political posts, including secretary of state (Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger) and governor (Arnold Schwarzenegger in California). Aside from being able to vote and the ability to run for office, naturalization improves access to federal civil service jobs, state and municipal positions such as police officer, and government contracts.⁵ College students and researchers find that some grants and scholarships are open to citizens only.

American citizenship greatly eases international travel, not least by making reentry into the country less arduous. There are no travel restrictions on length of time spent outside the United States, as there are for noncitizens, and citizens are able to travel to many countries without visas. For those immigrants who want to help family members migrate to the United States, naturalization improves their ability to serve as sponsors and shortens the waiting period. This can be a matter of urgency for those wanting to reunite with elderly parents or children. After 1996, there is an additional benefit of becoming a citizen: access to means-tested benefits. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, commonly known as the Welfare Reform Act, limited the access of legal permanent residents to public services, such as food stamps and Supplemental Security Income. Thus, naturalization results in improved access to the American social safety net.

Citizenship status certainly makes a difference in the lives of many immigrants and their families. However, it also affects immigrant and nonimmigrant groups, especially when it comes to their political clout. For example, Latinos comprise 16 percent of the American population, recently surpassing African Americans (Ennis, Rio-Vargas, and Albert 2011). But Latino citizens are only 12 percent of the American population. In other words, over a quarter of Latinos cannot vote or run for political office, and they are not protected from deportation (Pew Hispanic Center 2012). Some of these Latino immigrants are undocumented and are not eligible for citizenship, but most have permanent residency and can apply for citizenship immediately or in the near future.

The large number of noncitizen Latinos has two negative implications. First, the influence of Latinos in the political sphere is diminished because of the prevalence of nonvoters among them. It is true that nonvoters can, and do, engage in politics by making their voices heard in other ways: the young activists of the DREAMers movement⁶ have demonstrated this poignantly, staging public events and demonstrations and petitioning government officials to create a pathway to legalization for undocumented youth. And in 2006, millions of people, many of them noncitizens, joined immigrant rights marches in reaction to pending federal legislation. But noncitizens engaging in such political actions are vulnerable, and politicians are ultimately concerned with winning votes. In fact, there is evidence that the mass immigration marches increased local anti-immigrant organizing in some places (Bloemraad, Voss, and Lee 2011). The second negative implication of the large number of noncitizen Latinos is that the immigrant portions of ethnic groups have to rely on naturalized citizens and the second and higher generations to represent their interests and concerns, instead of being able to lobby for them directly. Lack of citizenship affects Asian Americans and other groups in similar ways.

Citizenship matters for immigrants, their families, and ethnic and racial groups. In addition, there are some issues that are particular to immigrants as immigrants, such as translation services, preservation and passing on of home languages, discrimination, connections with home countries, and reuniting with family members. Although a few exceptions exist, voting rights are currently tightly coupled with citizenship status even at the most local level. As a result, if more immigrants had citizenship, they would have more influence locally and nationally to act on their concerns. For instance, immigrant citizens could be more effective in getting local school districts to provide language and cultural instruction, or make provisions for religious holidays, customs, and extended visits to home countries. They could even run for school board elections and have enough fellow immigrant citizens to help them get elected. As citizens, immigrants could better pressure local police and sheriff’s departments, social services, zoning boards, and so on. On the national level, they could attempt to influence federal policy that affects immigrants, such as rules about family reunification, the financial costs of green card and citizenship applications, immigrant surveillance systems, and other issues. Not to be forgotten is jury duty: just like citizens born in the United States, naturalized citizens are obligated to serve on juries. Although many find jury duty onerous, it upholds the right to a trial by a group of peers. To uphold the right to a trial by peers in the context of a growing proportion of foreign-born, juries must include immigrants.⁷ Finally, immigrant citizens might end up changing policies about voting access to extend, and in many cases restore, voting rights to permanent residents in local, state, and even federal elections (Hayduk 2006).

Naturalization is more important than ever for the American nation, simply due to the sheer number of immigrants living in the United States today. Since the 1970s, the number of foreign-born people residing in the United States has been increasing rapidly, resulting in the highest number ever of immigrants living in the country. The nearly forty million immigrants comprise 12.9 percent of the total American population, a share that is nearly as high as it was during the mass immigration of the turn of the twentieth century (Patten 2012). To realize the promise of the American democracy, these people must be incorporated into the political process through full citizenship, rather than remaining disenfranchised and vulnerable. This democratic imperative concerns the millions of immigrants with legal status as much as the smaller number who are undocumented, but who are more likely to draw media attention. The number of noncitizens is a thermometer of the health of American democracy.

This book is premised on the idea that citizenship matters: for immigrants and their families, for ethnic, racial, and immigrant groups, and for the American nation. But I also argue that the debates about immigration should be broadened from their narrow focus on borders and undocumented immigrants to the big questions that define our nation. The process of turning foreigners into American citizens is currently on autopilot, with naturalization procedures taken largely for granted, which obscures the vital question of who should become an official member of the American nation through naturalization. What values and definitions of what it means to be an American are reflected in the way naturalization takes place? Should the barriers to citizenship be higher or lower? What are the implications of keeping the process the same or changing it for the meaning of citizenship and the content of nationalism? In unpacking the philosophical, moral, and cultural underpinnings of citizenship acquisition in America, I argue that naturalization works as a mechanism of exclusion and privilege, reproducing larger processes of social and economic polarization.

High levels of immigration, combined with the War on Immigrants, give urgency to naturalization. Unfortunately, the ranks of American citizenship remain elusive for many immigrants. The proportion of immigrants who have citizenship has been declining for decades and remains below 50 percent, down from 80 percent in 1950 (Bloemraad 2006). This abysmal rate is dramatically lower than in other immigration countries, such as Canada and Australia, even though they have higher levels of immigration. In fact, a comparison of Canada and the United States by the sociologist Irene Bloemraad (2006) revealed that these low rates are not explained by high levels of immigration. At face value, that would be the most likely explanation: the high levels of citizenship uptake in mid-twentieth century may simply be due to the fact that most of the foreign-born within the United States had arrived decades prior, and had more time to naturalize. In other words, when there are a great number of new immigrants, naturalization rates lag because the recently arrived people have not had a chance to naturalize. Yet Bloemraad shows that what accounts for low naturalization rates is rather an unfavorable institutional context, especially lack of government support for the naturalization process, and an overemphasis of the individual choice to naturalize that hides structural barriers.

The strikingly low uptake of citizenship in the United States is mitigated by a slight improvement in naturalization rates in recent years: from a low of 37 percent in the 1990s to 44 percent in 2009 (Nielsen and Batalova 2011). There is evidence that this increase is in part due to defensive naturalization: immigrants are reacting to the hostile political and social context by seeking the relative shelter of citizenship (Bloemraad 2006; Gilbertson and Singer 2003; Massey and Bartley 2005; Ong 1999). If we are to assign any weight to citizenship status as a category of membership, a set of rights, participation in society, even a sense of belonging, evidence that people are seeking it out of fear is troublesome. Defensive naturalization signals just how pervasive and dominant the confluent criminalizations of immigrants, people of color, and the poor are in American society in the twenty-first century.

At least twenty million people live, work, and raise their families in the United States without the right to vote and run for political office or access to other benefits of citizenship. The plight of most of these people is not as dire as that of the undocumented immigrants because they are at least technically eligible for naturalization.⁸ But together these immigrant groups comprise the expanding disenfranchised segment of population, along with others, such as native-born felons, most of whom are deprived of the right to vote. This creates what the legal scholar Linda Bosniak (2006) refers to as internal boundaries, where populations within a country are excluded from full membership. This book takes up Bosniak’s call to address explicitly the processes through which people become full members of the nation.

Millions of noncitizens and defensive naturalization are two of the problems with the way citizenship acquisition works in the United States today. My research uncovers a third: the way citizenship is distributed among immigrants exacerbates existing inequalities. Successfully completing the naturalization process requires time, effort, and considerable material and educational resources. Immigrants with more resources at their disposal acquire citizenship at higher levels. Meanwhile, immigrants with the lowest levels of education are the least likely to