Woodrow-Lafield, Karen A. 1998. “To Dream of American Citizenship and Family Unification: The Long Welcome,” Proceedings of the Social/Government Statistics Section, American Statistical Association, 1997 Joint Statistical Meetings, pp. 11-19.

Official statistics about lawful migration and unauthorized migration reflect the consequences of the last decade's amnesty. First, lawful admissions peaked in 1991 and then dropped and the number of lawful residents jumped for considering the magnitude of net authorized immigration. Although many had applied and received amnesty on a family basis, others subsequently sought to obtain immigrant visas for spouses and children, so that the second preference backlog is persistently high. Post-1990 growth of the foreign-born population is a consequence of extension of 1970s and 1980s patterns-substantial authorized immigration, continuing unauthorized migration, and diminishment of the historically significant cohorts of European immigrants. Legalized immigrants now appear within naturalization applications for which numbers are without precedent. A disproportionate number of Mexican immigrants are only now becoming eligible to naturalize after benefiting from amnesty programs of the 1980s. Prior research on naturalization and citizenship status is consistent with the hypothesis that Mexican immigrants could achieve high levels of naturalization. Their intentions to apply for naturalization seem to be influenced by having specific types of close family members abroad. The magnitude of potential family unification, especially for Mexico, is considerable and immigration of legalized immigrants' family members is likely to extend well beyond the special visa allocation of 1992-1994 into the next decade. For deciphering legal status composition, missing data as to several foreign-born population subgroups such as this one may lead to biases. A present concern is that the technical demography of estimating unauthorized residents in the United States leads to overestimation to the extent that these spouses and children, and other family members, are already resident. Even by a crude gauge of second preference visa backlog, the margin of error on unauthorized estimates could be great.