More Asian immigrants become U.S. citizens

This story tells why Asians are more likely to become citizens than Hispanics. Education and distance from their homeland are the two biggest reasons. DP

By Gannett News Service

Quad-City Times : WASHINGTON — While a raucous public debate swirls around the estimated 12 million, largely Hispanic, illegal immigrants living in the United States, little attention is paid to the nearly equal number of foreign-born residents who are naturalized U.S. citizens.

These new citizens come mainly from Asia. A smaller percentage of Latinos go through the naturalization process.

Forty-one percent of the 537,151 new Americans in 2004 — 218,874 — were from Asian countries, according to the federal Office of Immigration Statistics. And while Mexico tops the list of home countries of new U.S. citizens that year, the next five home countries are in Asia: India, Philippines, Vietnam, China and Korea. The same trends hold true over the five-year period ending in 2004.

Compare that with the makeup of the illegal immigrants in the United States in 2005, according to the Pew Hispanic Center: 56 percent were Mexican, another 22 percent were from the rest of Latin America, while 13 percent were from Asia.

“The question isn’t so much why it is that Asians naturalize at a higher rate,” said Bill Ong Hing, professor of law and Asian American studies at University of California, Davis. “It’s why Latinos and Mexicans don’t naturalize at higher rates.”

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