Pessimists, Optimists, and Skeptics: The Consequences of Transnational Ties for Latino Immigrant Naturalization

Abstract

ObjectiveCentral to current debates over immigration is the impact of transnational ties on immigrant political incorporation in the United States. Some researchers believe these ties hinder incorporation, while others have found a positive relationship between these variables, and yet other scholars have found that transnational connections exert no significant impact on immigrant behavior in the United States. We test these competing hypotheses in an attempt to resolve this scholarly debate.MethodsWe rely on data from the 2006 Latino National Survey and use logistic regression to test the impact of transnational ties on immigrant political incorporation (via naturalization).ResultsTransnational ties positively impact immigrants’ orientations toward citizenship and eventual naturalization.ConclusionsImmigrant political incorporation is not a unidirectional process where immigrant engagement in the United States increases with disengagement in the ancestral homeland. Rather, Latino immigrants with ties to their ancestral homelands are more likely to desire and seek out U.S. citizenship.