From Immigrants to Americans by Jacob L. Vigdor

Author:Jacob L. Vigdor [L. Vigdor, Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4422-0136-1
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

What Is the Goal of Naturalization Policy?

Understanding an immigrant’s rationale for pursuing naturalization is straightforward. When government grants citizenship, it forgoes the right to deport an individual. From the immigrant’s perspective, this is a valuable concession. What’s more, several other rights of civic participation are bundled in. In theory, an immigrant must renounce his or her prior citizenship when taking the oath of loyalty to the United States. In practice, foreign governments do not necessarily recognize this renunciation and dual citizenship is accepted, if not exactly encouraged, under current American policy.18 Thus, in the absence of real barriers we might expect all immigrants to pursue citizenship in the United States.

How exactly does granting citizenship serve the government’s purposes? In exchange for giving up the right of deportation, the government is guaranteed little if anything. There is no requirement that citizens vote, work, or even reside in the United States. Legal permanent residents are liable for the same taxes as citizens, so there is no automatic fiscal benefit. Indeed, under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, citizens are eligible for certain public assistance programs while legal permanent residents are not. From a political perspective, granting citizenship threatens to dilute the power of the native-born. Concerns of this nature have driven previous efforts to impose more stringent naturalization requirements. If there is so little in the way of direct tangible benefit from naturalization, why does government permit it to happen?

One possible response to this question is that native-born Americans receive an intangible “warm glow” from extending offers of citizenship. While the nation’s legacy of welcoming foreigners to its shores is undoubtedly a source of civic pride for many, there is an additional class of indirect but tangible benefits stemming from the use of naturalization as an incentive. By holding out the promise of naturalization, we encourage some immigrants to do things they might not otherwise do.

The government rationale for extending offers of citizenship is thus analogous to the use of frequent-flier loyalty programs. Airlines gain nothing through the actual exchange of seats for earned miles. They do, however, gain by encouraging travelers to alter their behavior, favoring one carrier over another (and possibly paying higher prices in the process) simply to accrue miles. Similarly, government and existing citizens benefit not from naturalization itself, but from the behaviors it encourages. The most obvious exhibit in this argument is the use of accelerated pathways to citizenship to encourage legal permanent residents—and in some cases, even nonpermanent visa holders—to serve in the armed forces. Less obviously, but more importantly, the offer of citizenship encourages an immigrant to come to the United States and remain on a narrow pathway of approved behavior—to exhibit the “good moral character” that has been a hallmark of naturalization policy since the beginning. Were immigrants permitted to enter the country, but prohibited from participating in the nation’s civic life, one might worry that a wide range of subversive behaviors would ensue.

Government can use naturalization policy to encourage certain types of immigrants to come to America, while discouraging others.

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