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10-07-2019

Electoral cycles, partisan effects and US naturalization policies

Authors: Marcus Drometer, Romuald Méango

Published in: Public Choice | Issue 1-2/2020

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Abstract

Using a panel of naturalizations in the United States from 1965 to 2012, we empirically analyze the impact of elections on naturalization policy. Our results indicate that naturalization policy is (partly) driven by national elections: there are more naturalizations in presidential election years and during the terms of Democratic incumbents. To disentangle the effect of government policies from changes in the demand for naturalizations, we examine how the acceptance rate of naturalization petitions is affected by elections. The analysis reveals that the acceptance rate is much higher under Democratic incumbents with the strongest increase during the years that are closer to the next presidential election. In contrast, (almost) no variation is found under a Republican incumbent. We then investigate the dynamics of an incumbent’s behavior over the course of his term in detail. Our findings indicate that the effects are more pronounced in politically contested states, in states with many migrants and for immigrants originating from Latin America.

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Naturalization is the acquisition of host-country citizenship by legal immigrants, which confers upon them the right to vote and to hold elective office.

The alliance between the Democratic-Republican Party and the Irish immigrants developed over time owing to a number of policy issues. For example, the Irish immigrants disapproved of Federalist openness to trade with England, which they regarded as their native country’s oppressor. For further details, see, e.g., Carter (1970) and Watkins (2004).

According to a Gallup survey, 20% of US registered voters say they will vote only for a candidate who shares their views on immigration, with another 60% responding that the immigration issue will be one of many important they take into account. See Jones (2015).

For detailed figures, see Gonzalez-Barrera et al. (2013) and Sect. 2.2.

For an overview of naturalization policies, see Mariani (2013). A detailed account of Hispanic immigrants in the US context is provided by DeSipio (2013).

We very much thank one of our anonymous referees for stressing this point and for proposing back-of-the-envelope calculations.

See Migration Policy Institute on https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/datahub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time, accessed on April 10, 2019.

For detailed evidence, see Sect. 2.2.

See, e.g., Brender and Drazen (2005) and Alt and Lassen (2006).

Drazen and Eslava (2010) argue similarly in a game-theoretical framework that the incumbent adjusts the composition of government spending in election periods to gain the approval of swing voters.

Historically, enfranchising non-citizens was more widespread, as described by Rodríguez (2010).

Under Executive Order 11,935, only US citizens and nationals may compete for, and be appointed to, competitive service jobs. For a discussion, see, e.g., Mariani (2013).

Citizens convicted of felony crimes lose (at least temporarily) the right to vote (see NCLS at http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx, accessed 26 June 2019). The US Immigration and Nationality Act sets several grounds upon which a non-citizen may be deported back to the person’s country of origin, including drug offenses.

See, e.g., DeSipio (2013) and Gonzalez-Barrera et al. (2013) for a detailed analysis.

In 2016, the voter turnout rates for Hispanics and Asian Americans were 47.6% and 49.3% respectively, but 65.3% for White Americans. Source: Pew Research Center on https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-turnout-fell-in-2016-even-as-a-record-number-of-americans-cast-ballots/, accessed 11 April 2019. Xu (2005) argues that registration requirements are an important factor in explaining the lower turnout rates among Asian American and Hispanic voters.

Our analysis focuses on naturalization, which is closely linked to other migration policy issues such as the regularization of legal and illegal immigration.

The 2016 elections were characterized by a fundamental divide between the two major parties on immigration issues. See, for example, http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-14/two-parties-two-radically-different-visions-on-immigration, accessed November 5, 2016.

See http://www.republicanviews.org/republican-views-on-immigration/ accessed 20 October 2016.

Currently, 86% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters are non-Hispanic whites, compared with 57% of all Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters. See http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/13/the-parties-on-the-eve-of-the-2016-election-two-coalitions-moving-further-apart/, accessed November 5, 2016.

See, e.g., The Economist (March 14, 2015).

The PEW Research Center lists 11 major changes between 1965 and 2012. See pewresearch.org at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/09/30/how-u-s-immigration-laws-and-rules-have-changed-through-history/, accessed September 29, 2016.

A nationwide survey of Hispanic immigrants by the Pew Hispanic Center in 2012 found that 18% of those who had not yet naturalized identified administrative barriers as a reason for not doing so, such as the financial cost of naturalization. See: http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/02/04/the-path-not-taken/, accessed September 29, 2016. The current naturalization fee for a US citizenship application is $640. See USCIS: https://www.uscis.gov/n-400, accessed April 11, 2019.

See Memorandum “Policies to Promote and Increase Access to US Citizenship” at https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_memo_naturalization.pdf, accessed February 20, 2017.

See Politico.com at http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/obama-citizenship-immigrants-naturalization-democrats-213810#ixzz3oS6y4e6N, accessed on October 13, 2015.

See Fox News on http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/20/new-citizens-push, accessed on April 29, 2015.

For example, the Migration Policy Institute (2005) describes the persistent backlog in naturalization processing. We also find evidence of a congestion effect in our empirical analysis (see Sect. 4).

According to the Los Angeles Times (February 10, 1998), processing errors were found in 90.8% of the cases handled during the CUSA initiative, resulting in 75,000 applicants with arrest records becoming new US citizens, in addition to 166,000 whose fingerprints were unclassifiable or not even submitted.

In one specification, we added the mean income of Hispanics, which is available until 1947 from the US Census, as a control variable. Doing so did do not change our results qualitatively (results not shown).

The alternative specification $log\left( {naturalizations_{it} /population_{it} } \right)$ yields very similar results.

Additionally, we normalized all values to avoid negative numbers.

The disaggregated series are available only for very recent years. Despite several attempts, we could not obtain the long series of petitions filed at the state level.

The literature shows that immigrants from specific countries tend to agglomerate in the same geographic areas (see, e.g., Edin et al. 2003).

We also tried the first-difference estimator based on Arellano and Bond (1991). However, that estimator suffered from the weak instrument problem.

Our results are robust to specifications that define the number of eligible migrants and the number of petitions filed at the state level as exogenous.

The partisan realignment among blacks already started during the New Deal under Franklin D. Roosevelt (see Petrocik 1987).

The results do not change qualitatively when using the entire sample.

The number of permanent residences by state of intended residence was not available for 1980, 1981, or 1987, but was interpolated after ensuring that no major changes occurred at the aggregated national level.

By law, only permanent US residents who are age 18 or more can apply for citizenship. However, a resident under the age of 18 can obtain “derivative citizenship” when his/her parent naturalizes.

The GMM results are robust to the specification of the endogenous variables, instruments and moment conditions. Moreover, we entered a linear time trend, a dummy for the restructuring of US immigration administration after September 11, as well as the stock of immigrants per states and year. All of those variants have no qualitative and very little quantitative impact on our results.

Strömberg (2008) shows that the number presidential campaign visits can be explained by the states’ number of electoral votes and the election outcome forecasts.

We obtain very similar results when using the value calculated for the next presidential election to define whether a state is contested or safe.

See Lopez and Taylor (2012).

Laos was also affected by the Vietnam War and was under a communist government in the years thereafter.

C.f. Junn et al. (2008). For a detailed discussion, see Kuo et al. (2017).

When spitting the sample as before, the results are less pronounced.

When splitting our sample into a before- and after-1989 period, it becomes evident that our results are driven mainly by the earlier period. This finding might indicate that the attachment of immigrants to certain parties was stronger during the Cold War period.

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Title: Electoral cycles, partisan effects and US naturalization policies
Authors: Marcus Drometer
Romuald Méango
Publication date: 10-07-2019
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Public Choice / Issue 1-2/2020
Print ISSN: 0048-5829
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7101
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-019-00687-3

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