Naturalization grants immigrants a host of new and important rights, privileges, and opportunities. While a growing empirical literature focuses on such issues as who is willing to naturalize and why, barriers to seeking naturalization, and the impact of obtaining citizenship on the social, economic, and political integration of immigrants, comparatively less is known about government determinations of who is approved or denied once a naturalization application is submitted to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Drawing on new administrative data obtained from USCIS (N=2,687,101 non-military applications adjudicated between October 2014 and March 2018), in their paper, The Importance of Race, Gender, and Religion in Naturalization Adjudication in the United States, Emily Ryo (USC) and Reed Humphrey (Wash.—pub. policy) find significant group disparities in naturalization approvals based on applicants’ race/ethnicity, gender, and religion, controlling for individual applicant characteristics, adjudication years, and variation between field offices.
More specifically, the paper finds that “non-White applicants and Hispanic applicants are less likely to be approved than non-Hispanic White applicants, male applicants are less likely to be approved than female applicants, and applicants from Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be approved than applicants from other countries. In addition, race/ethnicity, gender, and religion interact to produce a certain group hierarchy in naturalization approvals. For example, the probability of approval for Black males is 5 percentage points smaller than that of White females. The probability of approval for Blacks from Muslim-majority countries is 9 percentage points smaller than that of Whites from other countries. The probability of approval for females from Muslim majority countries is 6 percentage points smaller than that of females from other countries. This study contributes to our understanding of the nature of inequalities present in agency decisionmaking in the naturalization process.”
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