The importance of race,gender, and religion in naturalization adjudication in the United States

This study presents an empirical investigation of naturalization adjudication in the United States using new administrative data on naturalization applications decided by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services between October 2014 and March 2018. We 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. 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 decision-making in the naturalization process.

Naturalization—the acquisition of US citizenship—grants immigrants a host of new rights, privileges, and opportunities. It also protects them from deportation, which the US Supreme Court has recognized as “a drastic measure” that can constitute “the equivalent of banishment or exile” (1). Because of its critical importance in shaping the life chances and outcomes for immigrants and their family members, a large body of research exists on naturalization in the United States. This literature has focused 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 (2–5). However, we still know relatively little about government determinations of who is approved or denied once a naturalization application is submitted to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This lack of knowledge represents an important gap in our understanding of the naturalization process given that not all immigrants who seek naturalization are granted citizenship. In 2015, for example, 9.4% of nonmilitary applications resulted in denial, which increased to 10.3% in 2016 (6).^* Behind these statistics are tens of thousands of individuals. For example, in 2015, 75,117 total applications were denied naturalization, which increased to 85,364 in 2016 (6).Yet, the agency decision-making component of the naturalization process has escaped public and scholarly scrutiny largely because of a lack of publicly available data. This study draws on new administrative data obtained from the USCIS through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation to examine whether there are group disparities by race/ethnicity, gender, and religion in the likelihood of approval among nonmilitary applications.^† Race/ethnicity and gender are two principal axes of inequality in many aspects of American life (7). Of immediate relevance to this study, race/ethnicity and gender have long served as enduring bases of exclusion for citizenship in the United States (8–11). For example, the first US citizenship statute, the Naturalization Act of 1790, limited naturalization to “free White” persons (12). In 1870, the law was amended to grant naturalization rights to persons of “African nativity and … descent” but continued to deny the right to all other groups of non-Whites. Racial restrictions were lifted for selected groups in the 20th century (12). Beginning in 1855 and for decades thereafter, a married woman’s citizenship status followed that of her husband’s (13). Among other things, this meant that an American woman who married a noncitizen could lose her US citizenship, and an immigrant woman could not become a US citizen unless her noncitizen husband naturalized (14, 15). It was not until 1952 that Congress legally prohibited denials of naturalization on the basis of race, sex, or marital status (9).Religion has also functioned as an important axis of inequality in the history and politics of American citizenship. In particular, the treatment of Muslims or individuals perceived as Muslim warrants special scrutiny. Until 1944, judges in naturalization cases generally treated Islam as defining an ethno-racial identity, and Muslims were presumed to be non-White, rendering them ineligible for naturalization (16). In contrast, Christianity functioned as a hallmark of Whiteness, and the presumption of non-Whiteness against Muslims could be overcome only if the presiding judge could be persuaded that they were bona fide Christians. This judicial interpretation was eventually invalidated, but Muslims have faced renewed challenges to attaining US citizenship in the post-9/11 era. For example, in 2008, USCIS created a clandestine program known as the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CARRP) for the purposes of identifying, screening, and adjudicating applications for immigrant benefits—including naturalization—from individuals considered a “national security concern” (17). Class-action litigation challenging CARRP has revealed that it disproportionately and unjustifiably affects Muslims and individuals from Muslim-majority countries (18).Formal legal restrictions based on race/ethnicity, gender, and religion no longer govern eligibility for naturalization in the United States. Moreover, Congress has established a uniform rule of naturalization as required by the US Constitution (19). Nonetheless—or perhaps especially given this context—whether and to what extent de facto agency decision-making results in disparities along these axes remains an important unanswered question. Research on contemporary immigration enforcement suggests that facially neutral immigration laws continue to create or reproduce systems of social stratification. For example, studies have long documented how the purportedly color-blind US immigration enforcement regime subjugates Latinos and other racialized communities of color (20, 21). Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo have described the modern deportation regime in the United States as a “gendered racial removal program” that disproportionately targets working-class men from Latin America and the Caribbean (22). Hernández has shown how contemporary immigration detention practices function as “institutionalized racism” against immigrants of color and Muslim immigrants (23).Furthermore, studies of intersectionality suggest that these social categories do not operate in isolation to produce social stratification (24, 25). Instead, they work in overlapping and mutually constitutive ways to generate complex social inequalities (26). For example, a growing number of studies highlight the importance of understanding how American racism and Islamophobia generate a “racial-religious hierarchy” (27), one that subjects Muslims to combined effects of both racial and religious prejudice (28). According to Corbin, the prevailing narrative is that “terrorists are always (brown) Muslims … [but] … white people are never terrorists” (29). Other scholars have emphasized the importance of examining oppression or marginalization stemming from intersectionality of Muslim and gender identities (30–32). Studies shows that Muslim women have experienced unique forms of post-9/11 discrimination owing to their wearing of hijab, which visibly marks them as dual threats—as a group assumed to support “misogyny and antifeminist values that are viewed as inherently un-American” (33) and “sympathetic to the enemy, presumptively disloyal, and forever foreign” (34).The foregoing discussion of existing research suggests that race/ethnicity, gender, and religious identities (and their intersections) of naturalization applicants may play an important role in producing similar social hierarchies in naturalization adjudication outcomes as those identified in extant research on immigration enforcement and studies of intersectionality. The replication of such social hierarchies in the naturalization adjudication context is especially likely if USCIS operates in practice primarily as a vetting agency focused on immigration enforcement and national security priorities rather than as a benefits agency that serves integration needs of immigrant communities (35).A brief overview of the naturalization process and requirements is in order to set the context for our empirical analysis. As shown in SI Appendix, Fig. S1, an aspiring noncitizen begins the process by filing an application called Form N-400 with one of the USCIS field offices located throughout the United States (SI Appendix, Fig. S2). High application fees prevent many low-income immigrants from filing even if they desire naturalization (3). The detailed information solicited on the N-400 form and its length (∼20 pages) reflects increasing agency concerns about the integrity of the naturalization process (19). To be eligible to naturalize, in most cases, a noncitizen must have been a lawful permanent resident for a specified period of time, be of at least 18 y old, demonstrate a required knowledge of English and of US history and government, and be of “good moral character” (36). Once an application is filed, USCIS conducts an investigation of the applicant, including a criminal background check. USCIS will also conduct an interview during which an immigration officer will administer an oral examination that tests the applicant’s English literacy and civics knowledge. Failure to satisfy all of these requirements will result in the application being denied.^‡ For some noncitizens, denial means exclusion from the benefits of citizenship, while for others, denial can have more devastating consequences, including removal from the United States (19). The stakes are thus extraordinarily high for individual applicants and their families.