From Immigrant to Naturalized Citizen: Political Incorporation in the United States (The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society) (The New ... Recent Immigration and American Society)

Bueker finds that naturalizing and voting are distinct processes. Levels of education, income, and length of eligibility, predict both processes, but an immigrant’s country of origin frequently overrides these other characteristics and works differently in each. Immigrants from countries with the highest likelihood of naturalizing tend to have the lowest odds of voter turnout, while those immigrants from countries with the lowest odds of citizenship acquisition are the most likely to vote, once naturalized. Further, country of origin matters as much for how it interacts with other key characteristics, such as education and income, as for the independent influence it exerts on these two political processes. The majority of previous research on immigrant assimilation has focused on economic, educational, and social aspects, but few studies have addressed questions of political incorporation. Based primarily on four years of Current Population Survey data, Buekers's study examines two types of formal political incorporation--naturalizing and voting--across multiple immigrant groups in the U.S. Featuring analysis of immigrants from Mexico, Cuba, Canada, Britain, Italy, the former Soviet Union, China, Southeast Asia, India, and the Philippines, the text explores how immigrants with diverse individual characteristics, histories in the U.S., reasons for immigrating, and political and cultural situations in their home countries do or do not become politically assimilated in the U.S