Comment & Debate
Jared Bernstein. “Path to citizenship and out of poverty.” Economic Policy Institute. June 29, 2006: “In other words, there is a huge difference between the economic status of immigrants who have become citizens and those who have not. The path to citizenship is also a path out of poverty. […] the poverty rate of Hispanic non-citizens was 26.1 percent in 2004, compared with 13.4 percent of the naturalized Hispanic population. (The comparison is almost identical for black immigrants.) […] We can thus be confident that an important reason for this difference is the benefits conferred by citizenship and the disadvantages associated with lack of citizenship. It is simply much easier to integrate economically, not to mention culturally and socially, if one is a citizen.”