Data Methods: This paper uses individual level data to investigate the extent to which the distance an immigrant travels from their home country influences their propensity to naturalize in the United States. By merging Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS USA) data downloaded from the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota (www.ipums.org) for the United States with other forms of publicly available data, we are able to model the ways in which proximity to home country influences an individual’s decision regarding naturalization. The additional state level data that we use in our analysis comes from the U.S. Census Bureau and more specifically the American Community Surveys, the Statistical Abstract of the U.S. and the Annual Survey of Government Finances. We utilize composite variables and state-level fixed effects in a simple least squares framework to maximize sample size and control for standard variables that influence an individual’s naturalization decision.
Expected Results: We anticipate finding that immigrants traveling a greater distance will have a higher probability of naturalization and become fuller participants in U.S. society. We hope that this research will expand upon our prior work (Woroby and Groves, 2016 and Woroby, Groves and Sullivan, 2018) and contribute to the growing body of literature on naturalization decisions. Preliminary findings suggest that distance has a strong and positive impact on naturalization decisions and we hope to more specifically tease this out with greater specification the country of origin as well as other compounding factors (geographic/political/ Keywords: Immigration, Citizenship, Naturalization