This is a draft as originally submitted (with some corrections); the final review appears in International Migration Review, Volume 34, Number 2, Summer, pp. 518-520. International Migration Review is published quarterly on behalf of the Center for Migration Studies, New York, New York, Inc., by Blackwell Publishing, now part of Wiley-Blackwell, and the definitive version is available online at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120088271/issue .

Becoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada. By Irene Bloemraad. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Pp. 369. $55.00 Hardcover. $21.95 Paperback.

Karen A. Woodrow-Lafield

Such a rich, cross-national treatment of immigrant incorporation as Bloemraad’s Becoming a Citizen is a rare treasure for scholars of many disciplines and methodological orientations. This treatment of Vietnamese and Portuguese immigrants in Toronto and Boston is insightful and delightful. The book is valuable not only for scholars but also for general readers, public servants, advocates, and others thinking about immigration, social equality, the political system, and the demographic mosaic. Bloemraad demonstrates that political incorporation of immigrants and refugees must be understood as a process of structured mobilization within macro-level contexts. Political incorporation as full citizenship is defined here as naturalization plus participatory or substantive citizenship, engaging in the community and the political system through voting, community advocacy, and office holding.

The author intricately develops the historical and legal background that helps in understanding the contexts that immigrants and refugees remember and face. With strong restrictions, immigrants do not have perfect choice as to destination, mode of entry, and timing their migration, and the two groups are different within and between the two nations. She argues that some Portuguese preferred Canada over the United States for the orientation to social justice and some Vietnamese preferred the United States for stronger anticommunism. Among Portuguese in the United States, a small number benefited from amnesty provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, mostly as agricultural workers. The Portuguese migrants adhere to a strong myth of return, saudade or nostalgia for past lifestyle and relationships, collectively defining stays as sojourning. With many having come as refugees, Vietnamese have been less oriented toward returning until recently.

Why have trajectories of political incorporation diverged for immigrants of the U.S. and Canada with incorporation happening more quickly in Canada? One portion of difference is attributable to Canada’s legal codes that make political incorporation easier than in the United States, where applicants are facing higher fees and a redesigned test in 2008. Another portion relates to differences in kinds of immigrants in that Canada selects more highly on skills and education. Beyond these explanations, the author identifies the role of institutional arrangements and government policies, and she details the contrasting approaches of the U.S. and Canada national governments and implications for promoting and facilitating political incorporation of immigrants and refugees. Making its priorities clear, Canada adopted an official policy of diversity and multiculturalism in the 1970s with expanded programs for newcomer settlement and emphasizing the value of Canadian citizenship. This work makes a substantial contribution to understanding the influences upon Vietnamese and Portuguese toward becoming citizens and politically incorporated. Bloemraad’s work elucidates the role of government as structured mobilization that presents the meaning of citizenship and may facilitate community organizations as agents of political socialization, citizenship training, and leadership laboratories.

As Asian and Latino or Hispanic populations are becoming more evident with more than 300 counties, four states, and the District of Columbia having majority-minority populations, visions of U.S. immigration and immigrant policies are not as clearly defined as in Canada. Diversity policies relate to immigrants tangentially, mainly to protect civil rights and improve black-white relations, but now some uneasiness is now surfacing as to Hispanic-black relations. The bureaucratic welcome to U.S. immigrants is restrained in that they decide and complete naturalization largely on their own accord. U.S. naturalization is an administrative matter overseen by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, previously by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, rather than a transition encouraged and supported by the U.S. government. The U.S. naturalization level was lowest in the latter 1980s through the early 1990s, due to high lawful permanent admissions, IRCA amnestied aliens, high numbers of nonimmigrants, and a substantial unauthorized presence. As there were record numbers of applications since 1993 and as record numbers of naturalizations were approved since 1995, especially in 1996, 1999, and 2000, the level gained to be comparable with 1990.

She writes from statistical analyses of traditional census surveys, innovative use of various documentary materials, personal interviews of first generation Vietnamese and Portuguese immigrants and second generation individuals in the Boston and Toronto communities, and personal interviews with non-Vietnamese and non-Portuguese individuals associated with newcomer settlement and government officials, including community leaders. This is careful field work by a caring and objective individual-social scientist who has woven personal accounts with theoretical statements and background documentation. Qualitative research combined with quantitative material is very valuable in application to many immigrant groups for whom large-scale surveys cannot disclose answers. This work should inspire others toward similar studies or origin groups in the United States and elsewhere as well as comparative analyses of immigrant groups in different areas within the United States.

This study underscores the need for comprehensive empirical research on immigrant naturalization and institutional contexts as influences on becoming citizens. The first chapter is an examination of the acquisition of formal citizenship and election of foreign-born individuals to national legislatures as a look at the North American naturalization gap. Historically, immigrants have naturalized in different patterns according to personal characteristics (education, language ability, income, marital status) and origin (associated with social capital, social, political, and economic contexts of sending country). Yet relatively little is known about naturalization despite popular rhetoric about pathways to citizenship. Bloemraad dispenses too easily the importance of research on immigrant characteristics and naturalization given the considerable heterogeneity of the foreign-born population.

Most traditional surveys focus on current characteristics, such as citizenship status, without ascertaining characteristics at time of initial migration (including class of admission), timing of naturalization, or experiences between admission and naturalization, and contextual measures can be limited even for the current date. Millions of U.S. residents are ineligible to have naturalized because they have nonimmigrant status or otherwise do not hold lawful permanent resident status, which is less problematic in Canadian censuses and surveys. This point is not well covered here, considering the rise of the U.S. unauthorized population to two to four million in 1980, to three to five million in 1987, to six to ten million in 2000, and to 12 million or more, perhaps, in 2007. The author makes an assertion of “very high” undercounts for ineligible populations, but, to the contrary, immigration demographers presume that these groups were counted more accurately for the 1980s and 1990s than in the 1970s when an undercount of one-third to one-half was often cited. U.S. national surveys now seem to include nearly as many unauthorized individuals as naturalized citizens. Thus, the U.S.-Canada divergence on immigrants attaining citizenship is exaggerated unless one focuses on origin groups exclusive of unauthorized status individuals, as Bloemraad does for the most part.

The association of immigrant characteristics with the timing and occurrence of naturalization has not been systematically studied, although this research is beginning, and, ideally, will encompass characteristics, contexts, and cohorts in naturalization as a temporal process. My studies based on linked immigrant and naturalization records for U.S. immigrant cohorts of the 1980s have demonstrated that naturalization is a temporal process with origin, mode of entry, and immigrant visa class as significant covariates net other demographic and background influences (Woodrow-Lafield 2008; Woodrow-Lafield et al., 2003, 2004). Supporting human capital explanations, employment-sponsored immigrants naturalize more quickly than family-sponsored immigrants. Nonimmigrant adjustees naturalize more quickly than new arrivals, and many spouses do so more quickly than some other family members. The family reunification incentive is crucial in explaining naturalization for many immigrants among the first in their families to come to the United States, such as employment-sponsored immigrants and various categories of immigrant spouses, but it is less applicable for siblings of U.S. citizens whose relatives are likely to be already living in the U.S. Immigrant groups have different trajectories in naturalizing over time, with many Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino immigrants moving early to naturalize. Anticipatory socialization may be a factor in timing of naturalization in that millions of persons are always waiting for an immigrant visa and preparing for resettlement. Contextual measures about reception communities are lacking with these administrative data, but comparative studies can afford insights. A large-scale data collection that bridges the limitations of national surveys and administrative records and comprehensively covers specific origin groups in geographic contexts seems unlikely.

The emergence of citizenship and participation are explained as occurring through personal contact and social interaction as well as mobilization efforts of community leaders. Interethnic ties and social capital—friends, ethnic businesses, immigrant organizations, and community leaders—play roles in immigrants becoming organized politically. Bloemraad discusses how Vietnamese and Portuguese are moved toward full citizenship, despite initial antipathy toward politics, skill deficits, internal divisions that limit community solidarity, and simply being too new to understand politics in North America.

Bloemraad draws on case evidence to affirm that social networks are important not only in migration but also in naturalization. It would have been nice if the text had covered more expansively others’ research, such as that of Greta Gilbertson and Audrey Singer’s longitudinal case study of a Dominican family in New York during the era of Citizenship NYC effort (Gilbertson and Singer 2000) and that of Hans Johnson and Belinda Reyes (Johnson et al. 1999) about efforts of California community groups, nonprofits, and county governments to aid immigrants in naturalizing as a number of states were doing in anticipation of needs arising after most noncitizens were barred from federal funding programs under the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Subtle details grounded in social and family networks influence individual propensities to become a citizen, as we know from work by Gilbertson and Singer (2000, 2003). Certainly, ethnic media for-profit organizations, and community groups and nonprofit organizations have proven themselves as helpful in promoting naturalization and Bloemraad recounts the role of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition for efficacy in lobbying to continue the Citizenship Assistance Program that allocated funds for English language and civics classes, native language citizenship instruction, and application assistance.

Rather than political culture, public opinion, or party politics, Bloemraad argues that differences in government support for immigrant settlement, including citizenship, and support for multiculturalism account for patterns of political integration. The U.S. INS bureaucracy was more enforcement-oriented than integration-oriented in resource allocation and performance, and, in the current climate, control emphases have continued as prominent within DHS. Citizenship and Immigration Canada has a history of promoting citizenship as a priority and a new citizenship program was established in the 1970s. Bloemraad shows that multiculturalism has consequences for immigrant political incorporation. The only U.S. newcomers to whom settlement assistance is extended by the U.S. government are refugees. Bloemraad reviews this history, and David Haines (2008) has elsewhere considered the lack of comprehensive assessment of refugee resettlement programs. The category accounts for a small fraction of U.S. immigrant admissions, but their circumstances are thought to be needier than those of employment-sponsored immigrants who have immediate income or family-sponsored immigrants who have family members responsible for assisting them with basic and other needs. Canada not only assists refugees, but also gives them eligibility for mainstream settlement programs. Immigrant access to the U.S. welfare state is not through newcomer settlement program but rather on the basis of race. The U.S. public benefit structure is becoming more limited, and U.S. immigrants perceive their competition for rare resources.

With this foundation, Bloemraad draws on immigrants’ voices for the meaning of citizenship as influenced by one governmental hand more helping than the other. She describes U.S. immigrants as comfortable with retaining their identities in American society and as “hyphenated Americans” within the polity, but there are no illusions about “the melting pot,” and activism is defined along racial boundaries. Bloemraad states “the ideology of multiculturalism in Canada, understood as public recognition of one’s cultural community, background, and support for interethnic tolerance, carries a stronger assimilatory impulse than laissez-faire integration and de facto race-based multiculturalism in the United States (p. 160).

In Chapter five, Bloemraad traces the effect of nation-state policies on the founding, survival, and activities of community organizations. As do other nonprofits, immigrant organizations receive a sizable fraction of their revenues from government which could undermine their political effectiveness and give priority to funded programs, especially those for more needy, marginalized groups for whom political incorporation may seem remote. She suggests another U.S.-Canada gap in that Canada disburses a higher percentage of GDP to nonprofit organizations, and one wonders whether this divide is becoming greater. Bloemraad is positive about the role of government intervention in political incorporation through creating larger organizations that are more engaged in political mobilization and advocacy. Interestingly, Bloemraad states that most immigrants prefer participation and advocacy rather than protests, and she offers ways to understand the crescendo and subsiding of the mobilization of 2006 protests.

With more Canadian government intervention, a richer organizational infrastructure emerges for newcomer settlement that leads to more political mobilization and more leadership training. The structure of the Canadian political system is more accommodating of new candidates, including immigrants, and also less costly. Higher levels of naturalization in Canada set the stage with a pool of potential coethnic voters for immigrant candidates. The high cost of running for office and resulting socioeconomic inequalities in leadership create even greater class differences between political representatives and ordinary immigrants in the United States than in Canada.

The rhetoric of the national debates on proposed immigration legislation has trickled down to localities with passage of various ordinances and local laws affecting immigrants and their families. Congressional bills included harsh provisions, such as mandatory minimum sentences for people who support or shield (encourage) illegal immigration and for foreigners who return after being deported, and benefit provisions for legal status to unauthorized residents and specifying the pathway to regular status and eventual citizenship. The debate is heavily focused on unauthorized migration across the southern border and stopping rather than managing migration. It remains to be seen whether there will be meaningful legislation on enforcement, status for unauthorized individuals, and creation of a guest category for needed workers, along with more coherent North American integration. Responses to the harsh provisions of H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act that was passed on December 16, 2005, were significant with immigration protest marches in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the spring of 2006.

These findings are timely as policymakers, advocacy groups, and conservatives are confronting each other over immigration issues. Questions of “How well immigrants are faring in the society, economy, and polity?” and, more precisely, “how well are various groups of immigrants making their ways toward successful lives?” pose multidimensional challenges for social scientists for guiding policymakers and informing the general public. What do Bloemraad’s findings imply for political incorporation of U.S. immigrants as policymakers are weighing immigration reforms inclusive of legitimizing those of unauthorized status and giving a pathway to citizenship? One suspects that current public policies relating to newcomer integration would not be sufficient to ensure timely progression to naturalized citizenship for all origin groups. Incorporation would take place more quickly for those groups already possessing collectively defined interests in civic involvement and political engagement and more quickly for all with a public policy commitment. As Craig Calhoun (2007) explained about the dream of integration, we Americans need not be the same or culturally homogeneous so long as we as individuals are integrated within social institutions, e.g., functional division of labor, a common legal framework, and shared participation in a robust public sphere, plus participating across boundaries.

One wonders whether the media appropriately conveyed messages of grass roots efforts such as Citizenship 2000 and immigrant concerns demonstrated in protest marches in the spring of 2006 against the harsh House bill. Might public sentiment be oriented toward increasing U.S. government support for newcomer settlement and citizenship programs? This volume presents points in support that any confusion about American identities among newcomers may be as attributable to government policies as to individual motivations or characteristics. A long history exists of recommendations for reorganizing the former INS to meet the benefit provision aspect of its mission as diligently as fulfilling the enforcement function. Within DHS, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services demonstrated some progress, but ceilings will be limited without explicit emphasis, such as an independent task force recommendation of a national office on immigrant integration to interface with state, local, and private initiatives (Meissner et al. 2006).

Finally, scholars should be cognizant of the limits of short-term perspectives and the advantages of longitudinal perspectives on processes of political incorporation that may have begun with anticipatory socialization before migration and that occur simultaneously with linguistic assimilation, economic adaptation, and the family life course. These findings seem commendable indeed for the Canadian case, and the contrast is a basis for arguments for action-oriented policy shifts in the United States. The picture is not entirely positive from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada in that immigrants and refugees face challenges to labor market integration and more analysis is needed about links among language skills, training, and employment dynamics (Statistics Canada 2005). For the United States, studies are now emanating from the New Immigrant Survey, and immigration scholars can only hope that this undertaking will continue for decades and for further studies such as this of immigrants within communities.

REFERENCES

Calhoun, C.

2007 Letter to the editor, The New York Times, July 8.

Gilbertson, G. and A. Singer

2000 “Naturalization under Changing Conditions of Membership: Dominican Immigrants in New York City.” In Immigration Research for a New Century: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Ed. N. Foner, R. G. Rumbaut, and S. J. Gold, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Pp. 157-186.

Gilbertson, G. and A. Singer

2003 “The Emergence of Protective Citizenship in the USA: Naturalization Among Dominican Immigrants in the Post-1996 Welfare Reform Era,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 26 (2): 25-51.

Haines, D. W.

2008 “America and Refugees: Morality, Rationality, and Expedience, 1939-2005.” In From Arrival to Incorporation: Migrants to the U.S. in a Global Era, Ed. E. Barkan, H. R. Diner, and A. Kraut, New York: New York University Press. Pp. 55-82.

Johnson, H. P., B. I. Reyes, L. Mameesh, and E. Barbour

1999 Taking the Oath: An Analysis of Naturalization in California and the United States. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California.

Meissner, D., D. W. Meyers, D. G. Papademetriou, and M. Fix

2006 Immigration and America’s Future: A New Chapter, Report of the Independent Task Force co-chaired by Spencer Abraham and Lee H. Hamilton. Washington, D.C.: Migration Policy Institute. September.

Statistics Canada

2005 Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada: Progress and Challenges of New Immigrants in the Workforce 2003, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Ministry of Industry, Catalogue No. 89-615-XIE. October.

Woodrow-Lafield, Karen A.

2008 “Migration, Immigration, and Naturalization in America“ Chapter 2 (pp. 60-79), From Arrival to Incorporation: Migrants to the U.S. in a Global Era, Elliott Barkan, Hasia R. Diner, and Alan Kraut (eds.), New York University Press.

Woodrow-Lafield, K. A., X. Xu, T. Kersen, and B. Poch

2004 “Naturalization for U.S. Immigrants: Highlights from Ten Countries,” Population Research and Policy Review 23 (3): 187-218.

Woodrow-Lafield, K. A., X. Xu, B. Poch, and T. Kersen

2003 “The Process of Naturalizing: Contrasts for Asian and Latin American Immigrants,” Presented at the annual meeting of Population Association of America, Minneapolis.