Becoming a Citizen in the Age of Trump: Citizenship as Social Rights for Latines in Texas

Abstract

In the anti-immigrant national context of the first Trump administration, what motivated Latine immigrants in Texas to pursue naturalization? Based on 31 Spanish and English semi-structured interviews conducted during 2017–2019, we examine how lawful permanent residents’ (LPRs’) perceptions of contemporary immigration policy and their social rights affect their motivations to naturalize. Surprisingly, we find that although fear of deportation was an extremely common motivation, it was rarely the residents’ primary motivation. When asked why they wanted to naturalize, our respondents expressed four primary motivations grounded in their claims for social rights: proactive (gain the right to vote, benefit the group), pragmatic (expedite family reunification, access better jobs, benefit the individual), defensive (protect against deportation), and emotional (formalize a sense of belonging). Although 60 percent of interview subjects mentioned some defensive motivations, citing the current national and state political climate as hostile to immigrants, it was the least common primary motivation for naturalization; that is, they named another motivation first as their most important reason for naturalizing. The need to naturalize to protect their social rights in a shifting political context is a strong subtext to subjects’ narratives about why they choose to become citizens. Defensive motivations undergird all other motivations, but the national hostile climate is moderated by relatively positive local interactions with law enforcement and the larger community.

1. Introduction

There are considerable incentives for immigrants to become U.S. citizens. Naturalized citizens gain rights such as voting rights, higher priority for sponsoring family members who wish to immigrate, and protections from harms like deportability. We might expect that decisions to naturalize would increase during times of increased potential for harm, such as during the first Trump administration, when anti-immigrant rhetoric increased (Jamieson and Taussig 2017; Walsdorf et al. 2022). Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removals from the interior of the U.S. (not at the border) grew from an eight-year low in 2016 to almost 100,000 people in 2018 (Golash-Boza 2019), and these deportation patterns disproportionately affected male Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran, and Salvadoran immigrants (continuing a pattern that started before President Trump took office; Asad 2020; Cantor et al. 2015; Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2013). While President Obama focused on the deportation of border crossers and prioritized noncitizens with criminal records, President Trump announced that any person with unauthorized status or LPRs with criminal histories, no matter the offense, were deportable. This translated into more interior enforcement, using local law enforcement as force multipliers (Plankey-Videla et al. 2025). As a result, Trump deported 40% more noncitizens in 2018 and 2019 compared to Obama’s last year in office (Cardoso et al. 2021). Despite this exposure to deportation risk, Latin American lawful permanent residents (LPRs) still had a relatively low naturalization rate during this era: 62 percent compared to 79 percent for non-Latine immigrants (Pew Research Center 2018). This remained true even while the overall number of naturalization applications increased substantially, from approximately 750,000 in 2015 to almost 1 million in 2017 (Blizzard and Batalova 2019).

Interviewed during the first Trump Administration, our research subjects had good reason to be worried. The 45th president made extensive use of existing punitive immigration policies, in addition to immediately issuing executive orders to build a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border and shifting to expedited removal that curtails judicial review (Nagel 2025). Moreover, President Trump increased the number of 287(g) arrangements that deputize local law enforcement as immigration enforcers (Pham 2018; Rabin et al. 2022). In Texas alone, the number of 287(g) memoranda of understanding grew from 2 to 17 in 2017 (Pham 2018), increasing the risk of racial profiling by local police (Abrego et al. 2017; Armenta 2017). Unaccompanied minors’ protections ended, and the 2018 zero-tolerance policy separated approximately 2700 children from their caregivers at the border (American Bar Association 2018). President Trump also obstructed legal migration through Public Health Title 42, the “Remain in Mexico” policy, rescission of nonimmigrant and refugee visas, and the Muslim ban (Nagel 2025).

The effects of President Trump’s immigration policies during his first administration were exacerbated by nativist rhetoric that increased deportation fear, anxiety, and racism (Roche et al. 2020; Walsdorf et al. 2022). Anti-immigrant rhetoric and immigration policies affected school performance (Ee and Gándara 2020), increased bullying in schools (Huang and Cornell 2019), and led to higher anxiety levels (Eskenazi et al. 2019) and clinical depression (Rabin et al. 2022). Fear of family separation through deportation of a loved one affected adults as well as children of all legal statuses, including naturalized individuals (Cardoso et al. 2021; Cross et al. 2020; Walsdorf et al. 2022; Johnson et al. 2024). Exposure to news about immigration policies in the winter of 2017 was connected to high psychological distress for 84 percent of undocumented parents or parents with Temporary Protected Status, as well as for 57 of LPR parents (Roche et al. 2018). Another study found a 2- to 3-fold increase of suicidal ideation among Latine youth whose parents were detained or deported (Roche et al. 2020). In response, immigrants stayed home, avoided social gatherings, eschewed social services, and shunned driving (Martinez et al. 2021; Roche et al. 2018).

Other policies directly affected LPRs considering naturalization. President Trump extended the Public Charge Rule, which barred noncitizens likely to be dependent on government support from admission and denied LPRs’ applications for citizenship. The extended rule considered immigrants a “public charge” if they used even non-cash programs like public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps (i.e., SNAP) (Barofsky et al. 2020). In response, use of social services by immigrants decreased significantly (Ettinger de Cuba et al. 2023; Kenney et al. 2018) out of fear of being denied citizenship (Zeweri and Gardea 2022). Moreover, a commission vigorously reviewed naturalization processes in President Trump’s first term in an attempt to denaturalize citizens, claiming there was widespread fraud (Schmidt 2019). Naturalization fees also increased 86% from USD 640 to USD 1170, and income-based fee waivers were abolished (Brown 2020), disproportionately affecting Mexican-origin LPRs (Pastor et al. 2014). Hence, becoming a citizen under the first Trump administration became significantly more difficult.

In Texas, where our interview participants lived, important state-level policies affect this immigrant community. In May 2017, Governor Abbott signed Texas Senate Bill 4 (SB 4) into law, requiring local law enforcement to collaborate with federal immigration authorities. SB 4 empowers police and sheriffs to inquire about a person’s immigration status.1 Logan et al.’s (2021) study of mixed-status families (with family members with multiple legal statuses) in south Texas found spillover anxiety in all family members, regardless of legal status. Moreover, the study found widespread discrimination against Latine Texans; between 14 to 18 percent of Latine parents reported being stopped, questioned, or harassed by police very often or more (Logan et al. 2021, p. 528). Despite these state differences, however, Latine adolescents in both welcoming and hostile state contexts reported similar levels of anxiety about deportation, perhaps because of the highly charged national rhetoric across the U.S. (Cardoso et al. 2021).

In the Brazos Valley, where Bryan/College Station is located, local authorities strongly supported the increased immigration enforcement through SB4. For example, then Brazos County Sheriff Kirk publicly stated, “when a person is booked into our jail and we believe them to be foreign-born or may not be legally here, then we inquire with ICE as to their legal status” (Fernandez 2019). Kirk’s statement reveals his forces’ active collaboration with ICE and their negative attitude towards immigrants. Appearing to be foreign-born (arguably racial profiling) is enough for law enforcement to report them to ICE. Kirk has also said, “We worry about what crosses that border. Whether it’s smuggling of contraband, smuggling illegal drugs, exploitation, and smuggling of people” (Fernandez 2019). His words echoed the national narrative. Although located many hours from the border, the area’s Congressional representative and both senators for Texas are immigration hawks, supporting a border wall and mass deportation.

This is the context for our project. We examine motivations for naturalization in a conservative community (Bryan/College Station) in Texas, a state with a significantly higher deportation rate than Florida, California, or New York, the other states with more than a million noncitizen residents (Cantor et al. 2015). We interview immigrants seeking naturalization help from a local community organization during the first Trump administration to explore their motivations for naturalization. We use these interviews to explore the beliefs, identities, attitudes, and networks of Latine LPRs eligible for citizenship in the first Trump era who decided to naturalize. We ask: what practical and emotional factors influenced their decision? Given the strong anti-immigrant national context during the first Trump administration, in addition to a hostile state and local environment, we expected protection from harm to be the most important motivation for becoming a citizen. Surprisingly, we find a strong orientation toward social and political rights motivations, while defense against deportation was rarely named as the primary motivation. Participants felt mostly welcomed at the local level. Nevertheless, cross-cutting most narratives was the need to protect themselves and family members from deportation, because of the national rhetoric. Latine LPRs strongly opposed national anti-immigrant rhetoric because it discriminated against all Latines, calling instead for civil rights for immigrants and Latines.

2. Literature and Background

2.1. Who Naturalizes, and Why?

Scholarship on naturalization processes often emphasizes the importance of individual sociodemographic characteristics, social rights, and social context. We briefly discuss each of these topics in turn, reviewing some of the key individual sociodemographic characteristics that predict naturalization, and then discussing social rights and social context in more detail. After discussing these three explanations for naturalization choices, we discuss an important divide that affects family decisions about risk, benefits, and naturalization: the presence of unauthorized immigrants and citizens in the same family, also known as mixed-status families (MSFs).

2.1.1. Individual Sociodemographic Characteristics and Naturalization

English proficiency, the presence of children in families, educational level, and income are strongly positively associated with naturalization (Abascal 2017; Bueker 2006; Cort 2012; Kerwin et al. 2021; Liang 1994; Logan et al. 2012). Age and age at arrival have a curvilinear relationship, with increased probability of naturalization associated with employment and parenthood (Abascal 2017; DeSipio 2001; Liang 1994). Among Latine noncitizens, women are more likely to naturalize, likely because their financial and social incentives for permanent integration are greater (Ayón 2020; Pantoja and Gershon 2006) and they are more likely to mobilize politically (Bejarano and Martinez-Ebers 2018). Race and ethnicity are also important, but their relationship varies greatly by social context and interactions with other sociodemographic characteristics (Logan et al. 2012). Among the large Latine national origin groups, Cubans are most likely to naturalize, with Mexican immigrants about half as likely to become citizens (Pantoja and Gershon 2006). Cubans are much less likely to fear deportation than Mexican immigrants (Waldinger et al. 2024). Moreover, Cubans’ privileged treatment by the U.S. government as political migrants and their socioeconomic advantages have long been tied to higher rates of naturalization (Aguirre and Saenz 2002). In this interview study, we will not be testing the relationships between these individual characteristics and naturalization decisions because of our sample composition, but these relationships are important background for our results, especially because our sample is disproportionately women, middle-aged adults, and people of Mexican origin.

2.1.2. Social Rights

Social rights were famously conceptualized by T.H. Marshall ([1950] 2015) as access to civil, political, and social entitlements commensurate with citizenship. According to Held (1995, p. 67 cited in Newman 2005), civil rights are those “necessary for the establishment of personal autonomy, including liberty of person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, and the right to own property and to enter into contracts, and the right to be treated equally with others before the law.” Political rights relate to participation in government, such as the right to vote and run for public office. Social rights are those necessary to have a minimum standard of living. Marshall ([1950] 2015) envisioned these to be social welfare, public education, pensions, unemployment insurance, health insurance, and childcare (Newman 2005). While Marshall theorized that these rights occur inevitably and in stages, beginning with civil, then political, and then social rights, the concession of rights has actually usually required long struggles, developing shared interests between groups with different levels of power, and the diffusion of new norms about rights (e.g., Anderson 2016; Giddens 1982; Morris 1986; Neuman 2019).

Despite the complexity of Marshall’s conceptualization of rights, most scholars narrowly operationalize social rights as economic welfare benefits (Esping-Andersen 1990; Nam and Kim 2012; Orloff 1993; Stephens 2021). Scholars who focus on social rights as a motivation for citizenship underscore how individuals make cost-benefit analyses to maximize well-being, such as access to health care, education, and food assistance. In the national rhetoric about social rights for noncitizens, the focus has often been on welfare benefits, a debate that was highlighted in the 1990s. The 1996 Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) made noncitizens ineligible for federal benefits like Social Security Income, Medicaid, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, Section 8 housing, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (Texas Health and Human Services n.d.; Agrawal 2008), which spurred both a spike in naturalization and a movement to protect vulnerable elderly and disabled migrant populations from these changes (Fujiwara 2005). LPRs only qualify for these social rights if they have been in the country lawfully for five years (Rody-Ramazani 2023). Even qualified immigrants are often now dissuaded from using any government services, given President Trump’s threat to invalidate legal status if noncitizens were deemed “likely to be a public charge” (KFF 2019). The only way to access these rights safely is to become a citizen (Nam and Kim 2012).

In reality, citizenship confers more than just social rights; civil and political rights come with citizenship as well (Bhuyan 2010; Bloemraad 2018). Bloemraad (2018, p. 9) describes them as “right to territory and protection from deportation, …broader rights in the judicial system, greater access to social benefits, eligibility for certain jobs or occupations barred to noncitizens, the ability to sponsor immigrant parents or minor children to the US outside the annual immigration quotas, greater access to educational loans and scholarships, and the ability to vote and run for office.” These rights can be an instrumental impetus for naturalization (Abascal 2017; Logan et al. 2012). As we saw above when the 1996 PRWORA was passed, the introduction of policies that accord more rights to naturalized citizens increases the likelihood of naturalization (Harpaz 2015; Jones-Correa 2006; Mazzolari 2009). Gonzalez-Barrera et al. (2013) found that Mexican immigrants who had naturalized were especially likely to refer to motivations tied to social rights such as benefits, while other Latine groups were more likely to point to family reasons, demonstrating that we need to better understand how the different national origin groups perceive naturalization and its benefits.

It is important to note, however, that protection from deportation alone might be a strong enough incentive that the granting of additional social rights to new citizens might not be necessary to incentivize naturalization. Although LPRs express less fear of deportation than unauthorized immigrants or immigrants with temporary status (Roche et al. 2018), LPRs applying for naturalization were more afraid of deportation than their naturalized counterparts, as were immigrants who knew someone who had been deported (Waldinger et al. 2024). Amuedo-Dorantes and Lopez (2021) found that Mexican-origin immigrants and women were especially likely to naturalize when immigration enforcement in the interior U.S. increased.

2.1.3. Social Context: Networks and Feelings of Community

These social rights do not exist in a vacuum. The context of reception—the character of co-ethnic communities, government policies, and labor market conditions—is important in understanding the trajectories of immigrant communities broadly, and naturalization processes more specifically (Bloemraad 2018; Portes and Rumbaut 2024; Portes and Zhou 1993). A key element of the context of reception is the role that social networks play in shaping shared experiences between individuals and in organizations in ways that inhibit or encourage social and political incorporation through access to information about the processes and benefits of naturalization.

There is no scholarly consensus on the effects of social networks on naturalization. On the one hand, some researchers have found that living in states with a high concentration of co-ethnics and other immigrants tends to depress intentions to become citizens (Bueker 2006; Liang 1994). Following the ethnic closure tradition, some scholars argue that residential concentration with co-ethnics inhibits cultural and social assimilation of white mainstream values and thus lowers rates of naturalization (Bueker 2006; Huntington 2005; Liang 1994). Abascal (2017) makes an important distinction about the nature of these social ties; she finds that living with naturalized co-ethnics increases naturalization through information dissemination and the fostering of a strong identification as ‘American.’2 Poole and Soehl (2023) come to a similar conclusion. However, living with unauthorized co-ethnics inhibits incorporation and naturalization rates. Similarly, segmented assimilation scholars posit that contact with disadvantaged communities may impede formal incorporation (Portes and Rumbaut 2024; Portes and Zhou 1993).

On the other hand, the ethnic resilience tradition argues that eligible noncitizens may be more motivated to become citizens as a way to protect themselves and proactively challenge discriminatory practices and exclusionary policies when living in co-ethnic communities (Cort 2012; Pantoja et al. 2001; Portes and Curtis 1987). In this framework, co-ethnic communities facilitate naturalization (Aguirre and Saenz 2002). For example, Logan et al. (2012) found that Latine, Black, and Asian immigrants who reside in areas with large numbers of co-ethnics and who also experience minority status have higher odds of naturalizing than non-Hispanic white noncitizens. However, Latine, Black, and Asian immigrants living in states without restrictionist policies on voting and eligibility for public services have a lower propensity to naturalize. They conclude, in line with ethnic resilience scholars, that collective discrimination and restrictive policies lead to higher rates of naturalization as a protective measure (Logan et al. 2012). Hence, we would expect higher rates of naturalization as a protective measure against deportation in Texas, a state with punitive state policies towards immigrants.

Certain types of inclusive policies, however, encourage the incorporation of immigrants. Policies that promote social and economic incorporation, such as support for language training, job placement, settlement services for immigrants (Bloemraad 2018), availability of dual-nationality (Harpaz 2015; Jones-Correa 2006; Mazzolari 2009), and liberal electoral rules (Jones-Correa 2006) promote naturalization. Welcoming political environments foster feelings of belonging to the U.S. (Hochschild and Lang 2011; Logan et al. 2012; Van Hook et al. 2006). Belonging, according to Yuval-Davis (2006, p. 197), is about “an emotional attachment, a feeling of being ‘at home’… and feeling safe.” In this way, belonging is place-specific, constructed through social connections and membership in a neighborhood, town, region, or nation (Mendez and Deeb-Sossa 2020; Schmalzbauer 2014; Vega 2015). For some, citizenship is the culmination of belonging (Abascal 2017; Aptekar 2015); however, they are not conceptually the same. Feelings of belonging often give rise to a politics of belonging, where marginalized communities claim the right to stay, despite being excluded from the polity (Antonsich 2010; Bloemraad 2018; Hochschild and Lang 2011).

Exclusionary policies thus have sometimes contradictory effects. For example, restrictive state voter ID and driver’s license laws, which are often geared towards excluding Latine immigrants as a racialized group, can lead to either empowerment or demobilization (Cort 2012; Massey et al. 2003; Massey and Pren 2012; Wray-Lake et al. 2018). Van Hook et al. (2006) found that state-level restrictions on welfare access increased the intention to naturalize, not only to access resources but, more importantly, to assert a sense of belonging. Similarly, Gilbertson and Singer’s (2003) examination of Dominicans in New York found that as policies eroded LPRs’ rights, Dominicans felt they were compelled to naturalize to maintain their status. Yang (1994), in contrast, argues that minority immigrants, especially Asians, are deterred from naturalizing when they encounter a hostile environment.

Political mobilization can be a crucial catalyst for naturalization. Coutin (2003) examines the increase of Latine citizens in the 1990s not only as a response to more opportunities through the amnesty provided by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), but also due to the mobilization against nativist state policies in California (e.g., Proposition 187) and restrictionist federal policies that criminalized noncitizens, such as the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Pew Research Center calculations show that the number of Latine LPRs applying for citizenship in 2016 increased by 8 percent compared to the number during the 2012 presidential elections. Although increased applications during elections are not unusual, the 12 percent increase in naturalizations from 2016 to 2019 supports the idea that responses to President Trump contributed to part of this increase (Department of Homeland Security 2020).

2.1.4. Mixed-Status Families: A Key Divide

According to the Pew Hispanic Research Center, there were approximately 4.4 million U.S.-born children living with an unauthorized parent in 2022 (Passel and Krogstad 2024). These mixed-status families live in fear of forced family separation (Logan et al. 2021). Over 80 percent of U.S. children in MSFs were born at least two years after the parents settled in the U.S., and over 50 percent of the immigrant parents had been in the U.S. for at least five years (Preston 2010 in Suárez-Orozco et al. 2011). Thus, MSFs are a prominent Latine immigrant family structure and represent a relatively settled community. Parents’ anxiety about deportability risks affects parents’ and children’s cognitive and emotional well-being, social and economic incorporation, and participation in civic institutions (Calzada et al. 2020; Chavez et al. 2019; Roche et al. 2018).

The complexity of MSFs stems in part from the 1965 Hart–Celler Act, which established a system of preferences based on family reunification and skills required by employers, shifting immigrant flows from Europe and Canada to Latin American and Asia. The law set hemisphere-wide visa caps and gave preference to minor children and spouses of U.S. citizens ahead of lawful permanent residents, emphasizing a distinction in social rights, with citizens having greater access to family social rights than LPRs. The resulting backlog of cases meant that even eligible family members may have to wait up to twenty-five years to be reunited, encouraging many families to seek other routes (Kerwin and Warren 2019). As Abascal (2017) notes, Latine neighborhoods bring together individuals and families of all statuses, making deportability not only an individual but also a family and community concern.

Our study examines the experiences of LPRs who are interested in applying for naturalization, guided by these studies of the importance of social rights and social context for families in the U.S.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Data Collection and Analysis Strategy

In this project, we partnered with the Brazos Interfaith Immigration Network3 (BIIN), a local nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the well-being of immigrants in central Texas. BIIN offers a range of services free to the community, including citizenship classes in both English and Spanish, to help residents prepare for the naturalization process and learn the material covered on the civics exam. BIIN provided contact information for approximately 200 current and former students in their free citizenship classes, who were invited to participate in interviews between 2017 and 2019. Two undergraduates who had volunteered in BIIN’s citizenship classes when they were students in the first and second authors’ service-learning courses were recruited for the project after those classes concluded. These two undergraduates (one Latino and one Latina) conducted most of the interviews (see Appendix A for the interview guide), with the training and guidance of the Latina first author, who conducted a few of the initial interviews.

To protect the participants’ identity during this anti-immigrant period, we promised confidentiality and obtained a waiver of signed consent to only require verbal assent to participate under Texas A&M University IRB-2017-0010D protocol. Given that the interviews coincided with President Trump’s first two years in office, this study provides insight into how LPRs who seek help from a nonprofit perceive the national political climate, and whether and how it affects their intentions to naturalize. Vasquez Guzman et al. (2020) argue that participating in a community-based organization like BIIN strengthens immigrants’ resilience to deportation policies. Based on this previous research, as well as interviewees’ connections to BIIN and the student volunteers, we expect that the research participants were more likely to share their stories than if we had approached them without any connection to a familiar community institution.

In this article, we focus on the results from the 31 interviews, asking participants about their residence in the United States, naturalization plans, and what they perceived to be the benefits of naturalization. We also collected demographic information and information about language ability. In addition, the interviews explore the role of social networks (for example, asking about the demographic and language characteristics of the participants’ close social network in the U.S. and country of origin), interviewees’ feelings about their national identity or identities, and other factors that might influence their experiences with and attitudes toward naturalization. We use these interviews to explore both the concrete barriers that make naturalization difficult, such as cost and transportation issues, and the more affective components of the decision, such as feelings about citizenship and belonging. This is especially important since the Pew Hispanic Center’s research on this topic found that a quarter of eligible Latine lawful permanent residents said they were ‘not interested’ in citizenship or had not tried yet, suggesting that for a significant share of the population, the barriers are not simply practical (e.g., language barriers, finances, or eligibility rules) (Gonzalez-Barrera et al. 2013).

3.2. Positionality and Team Coordination

All of the research team members (the two authors and the two students working as research assistants) are U.S. citizens, and all except for the first author grew up in the United States. All of the team members involved in the interviews are fully bicultural and bilingual in English and Spanish. Both of the authors have been involved in the nonprofit organization for many years, including in leadership roles; the first author was one of the founding members of the organization in 2011, and both have been chair of the board of directors. In the spirit of community-engaged scholarship, the authors prioritized doing work that would support the organization as well as the research and have used their research findings to support the organization, such as helping to write grant proposals (London et al. 2024).

The research team met weekly during data collection. The students conducted most of the interviews, and team meetings were used to adapt to challenges that arose or answer questions. The students also transcribed the interviews and checked each other’s transcriptions. The first author and the students each coded the interviews in Dedoose version 10.0.35 for demographic information and themes that emerged inductively from the interviews and deductively from the relevant literature. They collaborated to resolve any discrepancies in the coding.

3.3. Setting

We focus this study on the motivations of LPRs in Bryan/College Station, Texas, a town with almost 200,000 residents according to the 2017 American Community Survey estimates (U.S. Census Bureau 2017). The county is 14 percent foreign-born; 72 percent of those immigrants are not yet U.S. citizens, and more than half of the non-citizen residents were born in Latin America (U.S. Census Bureau 2019). Roughly 25 percent of the total population of the two adjacent towns identify as Latine, but the distribution of the population across the two areas is uneven, with 39 percent of the smaller, older, and poorer town of Bryan (where BIIN is located) identifying as Latine, and 15 percent of College Station identifying as Latine. Whites and African Americans make up 41 and 15 percent of Bryan, respectively, while they make up 65 and 8 percent of College Station. With an expanding university, increasing private investment, and growing population, the twin cities offer ample employment in the construction, hospitality, health care, and educational sectors. Although a university town, the area remains politically conservative. In the 2016 election, Trump received 58% of the vote in Brazos County, which was somewhat lower than the immediately surrounding counties, but higher than the state average of 52% (Office of the Secretary of State 2016).

4. Results

4.1. Sample Characteristics

Table 1. Sample Characteristics (N = 31 interviews) ¹.

Nationality			Mixed status family
	Mexico	25		No	12
	Central America	3		Yes	19
	South America	3
Gender			Family type
	Women	25		Married	23
	Men	6		Single	8
Age ranges			English proficiency
	20–40	8		None	2
	41–60	14		Little	11
	61–75	8		I get by	12
				I speak English well	5
Length of time as LPR			Family income
	5 years or less	5		0–30 K	13
	6–10 years	11		31–50 K	8
	11–20 years	9		51 K+	9
	21+ years	5
Education
	None	3
	6th	4
	9th	8
	12th	5
	College or more	10

¹ Not all variables add to 31 cases, because of missing data.

shows the sample characteristics for the 31 interviews, conducted in the participant’s preferred language (Spanish for all but one case). All names are pseudonyms, and some identifying details in the text have been changed to maintain confidentiality. There are four times as many women as men in the sample, and almost three times as many married people as single people. Although the study only includes six male LPRs, it mirrors the gender composition of LPRs who participated in the nonprofit organization’s citizenship classes between spring 2017 and summer 2019. Such a gender disparity reflects women’s higher rates of naturalization nationally and greater rates of participation in community organizations as well (McCarthy 1990; Pantoja and Gershon 2006). Nevertheless, the small number of male participants makes it difficult to compare women’s and men’s motivations for citizenship in meaningful ways. Our sample is interesting in other ways. A third of the participants have a college degree or more, and a little less than a third make more than USD 51,000 a year. This is a relatively well-educated sample, probably reflecting the fact that Bryan/College Station is a university town. International graduate students may stay after their school completion.

Whether participants belong to mixed-status families or not also affects their orientations towards naturalization. For twelve participants, all family members currently had legal authorization to live in the United States. However, more than half (N = 19) of the subjects belonged to MSFs. A quarter of the MSFs were women whose partners were unauthorized. When asked about the legal status of family members, interview subjects did not refer only to the nuclear family. Over a third of subjects belonged to nuclear families where everyone was either an LPR or citizen, but where members of their extended families—parents, nieces, nephews, aunts, and uncles—were unauthorized. When asked about their family, they included their extended family in their response. We use the more expansive definition of family when discussing MSFs because that is how the participants themselves understood the concept and interpreted their sense of security and belonging in the U.S. today.

4.2. Types of Motivations for Naturalization

After coding the interviews in Dedoose, it became clear that the motivations of the respondents clustered into four categories. We developed a typology of motivations expressed by lawful permanent residents who are seriously considering naturalization to reflect these emergent themes. The four categories are not mutually exclusive; many people reference multiple motivations. Pragmatic reasons emphasize the rational, individual-level cost-benefit motivations discussed above as social rights. For example, becoming a citizen allows individuals to expedite family reunification by moving up the priority list in petitions for family members. This is one possible reason that maintaining stronger transnational ties actually increases rates of naturalization (Gershon and Pantoja 2014); those with strong family ties in their countries of origin have greater pragmatic incentives to naturalize to speed up the process of bringing their family members to the United States. In addition, citizenship can facilitate access to better jobs and benefits. Defensive motivations are also a form of practical access to social rights but instead emphasize protection against harms like deportation or future changes to qualifications for citizenship (Bueker 2021; Coutin 2003; Gilbertson and Singer 2003). These harms can be ones that have been directly observed, such as knowing individuals who have been deported, or they can be motivated by state or national discussions of potential policy threats to immigrants that have not yet been realized (Barajas-Gonzalez et al. 2018; Calzada et al. 2020; Roche et al. 2018). In this sense, it is the larger social context that impacts LPRs’ intention to naturalize.

Proactive reasons emphasize the instrumental needs and political rights of the group, rather than the individual. For example, individuals who emphasize the importance of collective power and the right to vote for the future well-being of their group are not describing motivations that are necessarily instrumental for their own well-being or rational calculations of individual cost-benefit but instead considering the long-term importance of collective mobilization and their own ability to speak for vulnerable members of their group (Cort 2012). As Pantoja and Gershon (2006) note, naturalization is often an act that emphasizes optimism in the efficacy of the electoral process; those who believe in the power of voting are more likely to naturalize (Bueker 2021). Finally, emotional motivations emphasize the importance of feelings of belonging, of being “at home” (Abascal 2017; Yuval-Davis 2006). Many immigrants feel that their home and family are deeply embedded in their local community in the United States, and becoming a citizen is a way of formalizing what is already true: they belong here (Aptekar 2015).

These motivations are likely neither fixed nor independent of context. As people progress through their life course and navigate various political and social contexts, their motivations are likely to shift. For example, most respondents in our sample are married and middle-aged, and nearly half have children under the age of 18. The motivations that drive decisions at that point in one’s life course are likely to be different than that of younger individuals. Other studies have found, for example, people who immigrated at older ages who naturalize are more likely to suffer from poor health than those who do not naturalize, probably due to concerns about access to resources in old age motivating naturalization (Gubernskaya et al. 2013). Similarly, all of our respondents live in a conservative town in central Texas, and the context likely pushes specific issues (such as hostile politicians) more to the forefront of decision making rather than others that are not as relevant in central Texas (such as lacking a co-ethnic community of support).

As we see in

Table 2. Expressed Motivations for Naturalizing, by Family Documentation Status ¹.

	Not Mixed Status (N = 12)			Mixed Status Family (N = 19)
Ranking	1st	2nd	3rd	1st	2nd	3rd
Pragmatic	42% (5)	25% (3)	--	21% (4)	37% (7)	11% (2)
Defensive	8% (1)	--	17% (2)	26% (5)	26% (5)	32% (6)
Proactive	42% (5)	33% (4)	--	37% (7)	37% (7)	5% (1)
Emotional	8% (1)	17% (2)	17% (2)	16% (3)	--	11% (2)

¹ Ns in parentheses.

, many people expressed multiple motivations for naturalization (a few, in fact, included all four motivations in their interview, but we list only their top three motivations here because most respondents did not draw on all four categories in their answer). We rank their motivations in the order they described them, that is, the motivation they mentioned first when we asked why they chose to naturalize became their first ranked motivation. Among those who belong to MSF, the top (first) impetus for naturalization was proactive (37 percent of interviews), followed by defensive motivations (26 percent). Among participants who did not have an unauthorized family member, pragmatic and proactive motivations were tied at 42 percent. Voting was the single most often mentioned theme when discussing reasons for becoming a citizen; it was cited by 22 of the 31 subjects as an essential matter. The desire to vote was often combined with concerns about future family separation due to deportation or eligibility requirements for residency or citizenship changing.

Social class, denoted by family income, occupation, and educational level, also connects to orientations towards naturalization. Study participants who expressed defensive motivations tended to have the lowest levels of income, middle to high levels of education, and labor in the service industry as custodial workers and house cleaners, or in factory and construction jobs. In general, these individuals are underemployed for their educational levels, which probably reflects their migration to the U.S. later in life. Eighty-three percent of defensive-identified individuals belong to MSFs. Individuals who have an emotional connection to citizenship have lived in the U.S. for longer periods, have middle to high family incomes, and tend to work in service-oriented jobs. Despite having been established longer in the community, 75 percent of subjects who claimed emotional motivation belong to MSFs. Study participants emphasizing a pragmatic motivation include the highest proportion of high-income families, professionals, and men, while at the same time having the lowest percentage of MSFs (44 percent). Individuals emphasizing proactive motivations are more likely to be from lower-income backgrounds, work in custodial occupations, and have a wide range of educational levels. About 60 percent belong to MSFs, expressing high levels of fear and uncertainty.

Sixty-eight percent of interview subjects who belong to MSFs mention concern with family unity, with 80 percent of these LPRs expressing outright fear. Participants who do not belong to MSFs are much less likely to feel affected by anti-immigrant discourses, and for the 25 percent who are, their concern with family unity focuses on petitioning for family members to join them in the U.S. more rapidly, rather than on the possibility of family deportation. This variation in inflection regarding family unity concerns is reflected in the fact that 42 percent of non-MSF participants chose pragmatic motivations as their top concern.

We discuss each motivation in turn.

4.3. Pragmatic Motivations

Many people in both family types emphasized pragmatic reasons for wanting to naturalize. These reasons generally focused on the family, rather than the individual’s personal needs for safety. Petitioning for family members to become LPRs, an example of a social right, was the most common pragmatic concern that interviewees mentioned. The case of Roberto is a prime example.

Roberto obtained his residency through IRCA in 1990, having worked in the U.S. through the Special Agricultural Worker program since his 20s. Now 68 years old, Roberto, a Mexican who has been in the U.S. since 1978 and is not in an MSF, is preparing for his citizenship exam. When asked why now, he says,

Well, it’s very simple. I thought about becoming a citizen first of all, for my family, to help me to fix their papers because I still have not been able to fix their papers… [My children are in Mexico.] And also, to vote. I have thought a lot about voting. I think, maybe one more vote can be of great benefit so we can be stronger, have greater unity, have more power in what the majority of us believe in, right? To vote for a good leader that protects us more, who helps us more, right?

As an LPR, he can petition for a spouse, minor children, and unmarried sons and daughters, but they do not have top preference under the 1965 Hart–Celler Act family reunification clause. He may have to wait 20 years for his family’s approved visas to be honored (Kandel 2018). Becoming a citizen can accelerate this process, a fundamental pragmatic social right. He also mentions proactive concerns, a political right: voting for fair and just treatment of the Latine community. Roberto noted that immigrants were well treated in Bryan/College Station but disagreed with national politicians who marked all immigrants as criminals. “It’s just not true,” he says, adding “…and we do the jobs that Americans don’t want to do.”

Emilio, a 39-year-old Venezuelan, also chose pragmatic motivations as his top reason for becoming a citizen. Different from Roberto, however, his mother and several nieces and nephews are in the U.S. without authorization. The entire family requested political asylum, but only some of them received it. For Emilio, who obtained LPR status through a citizen brother and is a professional personally earning more than USD 60,000 annually (not including his spouse’s income as an educator), fears for his undocumented family members loom large. He hopes to become a citizen to exercise a citizen’s social right to petition for his now-unauthorized elderly mother. However, it seems improbable that he will be able to accomplish his goal.

Similar to most interview subjects, Emilio had a generally positive view of local authorities but felt strongly negative about the way national discourse portrays immigrants. He mentions, “I don’t like [the way politicians talk about immigrants], the point of view presented by this president is wrong. Republicans are always going to propose anti-immigrant policies.” Emilio and Roberto’s cases demonstrate how even seemingly non-political, pragmatic motivations seeking more social rights reveal a striking critique of current anti-immigrant national rhetoric and the ways they are experienced personally by MSFs and non-MSFs.

4.4. Defensive Motivations

Given the anti-immigrant context, we expected defensive motivations to be a prominent theme and were surprised that this was not the primary motivation for most participants. Although the majority of participants (23 out of 31) mentioned how the hostile anti-immigrant climate in the U.S. under President Trump influenced their decision to naturalize, study participants who belonged to MSF were significantly more likely to cite defensive motivations as their primary reason for naturalization. Importantly, examples of defensive motivations span the spectrum of demographic characteristics, including those with the highest educational attainment and income; they were not necessarily the most vulnerable LPRs as depicted in the media. For example, Nelly’s desire to naturalize is rooted in the need to feel secure and safe. A 45-year-old Mexican custodial worker with a technical degree from Mexico, she has a family income of USD 55,000 together with her spouse, who works in construction. Although her family, including extended family, are LPRs, she fears that at any moment they can become a target of the ever-changing immigration rules. Nelly was petitioned by her father and has been an LPR for 7 years. When asked if her legal status had played a role in her decision to naturalize, Nelly responded, “Yes, of course it did because of the new laws… because as a resident… you can have problems too.” Citizenship is the only safe status in an environment where noncitizens are seen as interlopers (Coutin 2003; Nam and Kim 2012).

Diana, a 58-year-old Honduran doctor now working as a certified nurse’s assistant, cites the need to feel safe as her most important motivation for becoming a citizen. Although she and her spouse, a retired Ph.D. in agronomy, are LPRs, she has brothers and sisters who have Temporary Protective Status, which President Trump sought to end in his first term and President Biden later expanded (Krogstad and Gonzalez-Barrera 2021). Citizenship for her means “feeling safe and having stability. They can no longer deport you at any moment.” She notes that not all law enforcement officers understand the law, and “the law, in any case, can change at any moment.” Like most other interviewees, she has several motivations. In order of importance, she lists them,

Well, like I said, first, protection from deportation because things could remain the same or they could change. And it could be that residents themselves can no longer apply for citizenship, receive benefits. I want to vote and I want to participate in a jury.

For Diana, like many others, defensive citizenship goes hand in hand with a sense of belonging—in Yuval-Davis’ (2006) terms, a feeling of being ‘at home’ and safe.

Similar to Diana, Rafaela is motivated by both a sense of her family’s deportability and feelings of injustice. At 38 years of age, she has lived half of her life in the U.S. She and her spouse, who have only a junior high education, earn a combined USD 60,000 annually, with her income from a school cafeteria and his from a cement company. Rafaela is a Mexican LPR (her mother petitioned for her), her children are citizens, but her spouse is unauthorized. Noting the ways defensive and pragmatic concerns are closely intertwined, she said the most important reason for naturalizing was “…to help my husband.” She later expands how anti-immigrant sentiment affects her desire to become a citizen: “I think that if I am a citizen, I will feel more secure. And if a president comes in that wants to take residents’ status away, I will feel safer.”

Besides discussing the racism that she and her fellow Latine immigrants experience at work and how politicians’ criminalization of immigrants is unjust, Rafaela talks about the importance of voting in both concrete and abstract terms. Her interest in protecting her family and her indignation at current nativism informs Rafaela’s third emphasis, her proactive orientation. She explains:

The pros of citizenship? There are many benefits. And I am not talking about extracting money from the government but rather the ability to vote. In my family’s case, [voting] in order to help my husband obtain his residency.

While scholars argue that the enactment of exclusionary policies are key motivators for Latine immigrants to seek naturalization (Logan et al. 2012), we find it is primarily the possibility of future exclusionary policies that drives LPRs’ decisions. Nelly, Diana, and Rafaela fear that naturalization requirements will change, making them ineligible to become citizens in the future. Anthropologist Susan Bibler Coutin (2003) found something similar with Salvadoran immigrants in California, who were afraid their rights were in jeopardy. While Nelly and Diana did not report experiences with local racism, all three expressed distress at the national anti-immigrant sentiment. For example, Amelia, who is part of an MSF, expressed that she did not like the way people talked about immigrants in the media, saying “We are made of flesh and bone; we have feelings.” Those with unauthorized family members live in a continual state of anxiety because their loved ones could be deported (Enriquez 2020; Roche et al. 2018). Even when families were all LPRs or contained only authorized members, the participants were apprehensive about the deportability of their neighbors, friends, and larger community (Pinedo and Valdez 2020).

4.5. Proactive Motivations

Proactive motivations, which underscore the desire to formally participate in the polity through voting, a case of political rights, were the most common reason for naturalizing among individuals from MSFs, and they were tied for the most common among those who were not part of an MSF. These participants emphasized the importance of improving the future political climate for their families and communities, with the majority focusing on the significance of voting. Women, who make up the majority of our sample, are almost twice as likely to have primarily proactive orientations compared to pragmatic or defensive, and over three times more likely than emotional motivations.

For example, Verónica, a 43-year-old Mexican mother of five, has lived in the U.S. for 28 years and worked at a chicken processing plant for the last 14 years. Having crossed the Rio Grande without authorization, she obtained legal residency through the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that allows a restricted number of domestic violence survivors the ability to adjust their status. Having left an abusive relationship, she is now partnered with an unauthorized individual with whom she has started a new family. Verónica eloquently explains her motivations for naturalizing:

I want to become a citizen to have a say in the laws being made. I have a 1-year-old baby girl. I would not want to leave her just because I am a resident, and something changes tomorrow. That is why I want to become a citizen… to make my vote count.

While she claims to have been treated decently by local authorities, Verónica perceives the current political moment as hostile and uncertain. Although all her children are U.S.-born and she is a long-time LPR, she fears she may still be separated from her daughter. When asked how long she has been considering naturalizing, she responds: for a very long time. When asked what changed, Verónica quickly replied, “[It’s because] President Trump has such harsh laws.” Respondents frequently mentioned Trump’s proposal to deport all undocumented individuals as motivation to naturalize. Verónica’s spouse, a construction worker, would likely be among those deported. For Verónica, family separation is a very real current and future concern, showing how defensive concerns intertwine with proactive motivations.

Another study participant, Victoria, came to the U.S. by waiting ‘in line.’ Fifty-seven-year-old Victoria has a stable job as a university custodial worker; her partner is a construction worker. Together they earn USD 55,000 yearly. Through the family reunification clause of the 1965 Hart–Celler Act, her citizen spouse petitioned for her and their children to obtain visas. After three years, they traveled from Mexico to join him. Although Victoria’s entire family has legal authorization to be in the U.S. and she has been an LPR eligible for naturalization for nine years, her experiences of discrimination and mistreatment as a marginalized member of society kept her from naturalizing. Since she does not speak English well, she fears that even as a citizen, she will be treated “…as a second- or third-class citizen… There is discrimination and even if I become a citizen, the discrimination will continue.” This echoes the findings of Logan et al. (2021) in south Texas: parents of all statuses experienced fear of deportation of family or community members, which is exacerbated by discrimination and racism (also see Aranda and Vaquera 2015).

Now, Victoria wants to vote. Even though she belongs to a non-MSF, her proactive orientation derives from her view that immigrants suffer discrimination and that she can be part of a needed change. When asked her main reasons for becoming a citizen, Victoria replied:

To vote, if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain because you don’t think they do things right. I want to vote to participate and be part of those who make the decision about who is in the government… Well, I don’t like the way [politicians] talk about immigrants… they are not right to speak poorly about immigrants because we just come to work… I want to vote to make a difference, to contribute even if just a little bit to elect politicians.

Victoria’s case demonstrates how even individuals who do not belong to an MSF feel aggrieved by the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from Washington. While she has not had negative experiences with local authorities, she believes the anti-immigrant discourse from politicians can lead to discrimination. The uneasiness that Victoria feels has motivated her to become a citizen.

4.6. Emotional Motivations

Although only a few people described a sense of belonging or emotional motivations as their primary inspiration for naturalization, some interviewees did emphasize their feelings of connection and how that influenced their decision to naturalize. For most, a sense of belonging was intimately tied to the fact that their children and perhaps even grandchildren were deeply rooted ‘Americans.’ Belonging, thus, included feeling rooted in the United States through family, as Aptekar (2015) described.

Silvia, for example, has been in the U.S. for almost 30 years. Working as a domestic worker, she and her husband, a chauffeur who obtained LPR through IRCA, have raised five children. Although in the past, both she and her siblings were unauthorized, now all her family have legal status. “Like my grandmother used to say,” Silvia notes, “at a certain point I decided to come to the U.S., a country where you can be whatever you want.” Right after Silvia made this expression of immigrant optimism, she recognized that many Mexican immigrants face discrimination and exploitation. She continued,

[But] we no longer fit in [Mexico]. And so it would be good to become citizens, because even though this is not our country, it is our children’s country… We were seeds planted in Mexico, but we came here to create ourselves. And yes, this is where we established our lives.

Silvia’s attachment to the U.S. grew as her children and grandchildren established roots in the U.S. She participates in church activities and the citizens’ Police Academy, having made Bryan her home even though she disagrees with the national anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Carmen, who belonged to an MSF, felt similarly. A 53-year-old woman with a secretarial technical degree from Mexico, she left after facing sexual harassment at work as a single mother. She sought a new life in the U.S. Doing housekeeping at a ranch, she met her husband, who obtained LPR through IRCA, and later petitioned for her regularization. When asked if she belonged, she chuckled, “I have been here for 28 years. I have lived here longer than I have in Mexico.” Besides, she noted, her children would never go back to Mexico, and she belonged here with them. Importantly, she feared that citizenship eligibility requirements would change, conceivably making it impossible for her to stay with her children. It was for this reason that she was preparing for the naturalization exam, even if she did not feel her English was good enough to pass. Different from most, she has had negative experiences with local police after her daughter was injured in a hit-and-run. Carmen feels she is racially profiled because she is Mexican and that politicians are racist and corrupt. Her motivations for naturalizing combine a sense of belonging and exclusion; becoming a citizen secures her inclusion in a land where her children and grandchildren belong.

5. Limitations

Several key limitations provide important context for these findings. First, our sample is drawn from individuals who have already signed up with a nonprofit organization that helps with preparation for naturalization. This creates an important sample bias: all our respondents are interested in naturalization. Thus, our data can only speak to the motivations of people who have already decided to naturalize, and we cannot analyze the perspectives of LPRs who think that naturalization is unimportant or who do not intend to stay in the U.S. Second, due to the threats to citizenship rules under the Trump administration, and because many of our participants disclosed information about family members living in the U.S. without authorization, we put in place strict confidentiality protections, including retaining no identifying information for any participants. For this reason, we are unable to follow participants over time, which prevents us from comparing individuals who successfully completed their naturalization process to those who did not. Third, we did not test the relationship between individual demographic variables and the naturalization motivations we describe here because our sample structure does not allow it. For example, we note above that changes in the life course make it likely that young single men would have different patterns than we observe here, but we cannot test that given the dominance of women, married people, and middle-aged respondents in our sample. Future studies comparing the hostile state context we analyze here to more supportive state contexts would be especially useful (although note that Cardoso et al. (2021) found that state context mattered little for anxiety, so it is possible the effect would be minimal), as would studies able to follow applicants over time to compare successful naturalization to those who are denied or abandon the process.

6. Discussion and Conclusions

Immigration policies and their racialized and gendered enforcement have had real impacts on the study participants. Thirty-nine percent (N = 12) express proactive concerns as their top motivation, with voting for more equitable policies the primary concern; 29 percent (N = 9) intend to naturalize for mainly pragmatic reasons, the most important of which was petitioning for family; 19 percent (N = 6) act primarily out of defensive motivations, believing that eligibility rules could change and they and their families may be deportable; and 13 percent (N = 4) act first out of an emotional motivation, feeling that their families belong in the U.S., and thus they do as well. Proactive, pragmatic, and defensive motivations are about the core political, social, and civil rights of voting, petitioning for family members, obtaining benefits, and staving off deportation or a change in naturalization rules, calling for the civil right of keeping families together. Overwhelmingly, Latine LPRs in our sample were motivated to become citizens to secure their political, social, and civil rights, many of them noting that President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric hastened their decisions. It is noteworthy that we never asked about President Trump specifically. We asked, “What do you think about the ways politicians talk about immigrants? Are they mostly right or wrong? Why? Does the treatment of immigrants influence your decision to become a citizen? If yes, how?” (See Appendix A). The fact that participants consistently name the president points to his prominence in the national anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Moreover, it is important to note participants’ desire for more than formal citizenship; our participants seek substantive citizenship where they do not live in fear of family separation and immigration raids in their communities. There will not be substantive citizenship until everyone’s civil rights are respected. Study participants’ intersectional identities impact how they experience the political moment. Belonging to an MSF, whether it be immediate or extended family, led the majority to feel anxiety and fear. Social class further shaped how subjects derived meaning from their situation: being low-income more often translated into proactive and defensive orientations towards naturalization, while high-income individuals are more likely to emphasize pragmatic concerns. At the same time, the criminalization of immigrants was internalized as racism against Latines, and in so doing, highlights their own Latinidad and shared experience of oppression with other Latine people (Stacey et al. 2011).

In analyzing the motivations of LPRs for pursuing naturalization, we find support for all the theoretical approaches discussed at the outset of the paper, but social rights and anti-immigrant contextual factors are the most salient. The motivations for naturalization of LPRs discussed by the study participants are primarily rooted in their family lives and their reactions to the current anti-immigrant context, inflamed by President Trump’s nativism. The importance of family is likely tied to the preponderance of women in our sample and to the fact that women are primarily responsible for the immigrant family’s reproduction (Abrego and Menjívar 2011; Ayón 2020; Domínguez and Watkins 2003; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). The small sample size precludes the examination of the relationships with each individual socio-demographic characteristic. However, none of the main predictors of naturalization, except for the presence of children and gender, appear to be significant in the subjects’ narrative or biography (Abascal 2017; Pantoja and Gershon 2006).

We find strong support for the rational-instrumental social rights approach: pragmatic concerns are mentioned often (tied for first among non-MSF participants and ranked third for MSF individuals). Some interviewees understand naturalization as a means to increased benefits such as better jobs, social welfare, and an end to costly LPR renewal fees (Abascal 2017; Hainmueller et al. 2017; Logan et al. 2012). However, the overwhelming emphasis is on a single pragmatic benefit: the enhanced ability to petition for family reunification and regularization of unauthorized family members. Given that the majority of subjects described naturalization as a strategic response to today’s nativism, our respondents’ frequent mention of pragmatic motivations is also consistent with social context explanations for decisions to naturalize (Asad 2020; Cort 2012; Pantoja et al. 2001; Pinedo and Valdez 2020). Motivations for becoming a citizen are not mutually exclusive; the anti-immigrant environment and exclusionary policies frame subjects’ everyday lives and shape their actions. This is underscored by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ own data showing a continued increase—rather than the customary electoral spike only—in naturalizations after President Trump’s first election (Department of Homeland Security 2020). The Pew Research Center (Budiman et al. 2020) further finds an increase in Latine naturalized citizens voting and concern with President Trump’s immigration policies. That is, exclusionary policies increase Latine voter turnout generally (White 2016), and according to our study, augment naturalized citizens’ intentions to vote.

The social context in which naturalization decisions occur offers a key explanation for why Latine immigrants in Bryan/College Station, Texas, choose to become citizens. As scholars have noted, belonging is place-specific, constructed through social connections and membership in a community (Mendez and Deeb-Sossa 2020; Schmalzbauer 2014; Vega 2015). Respondents cite the current national political context—a social and political environment characterized by xenophobia, nativism, and anti-immigrant sentiments—as the root of their motivations to naturalize now. However, subjects’ naturalization intentions were mediated by their mostly positive interactions locally. Defensive motivations were not primary, even though almost 40 percent of individuals (N = 12) single out Trump’s rhetoric as key to the production of this hostile environment. Moreover, nearly 60 percent (N = 18) describe Latine immigrant criminalization as a salient component of this hostile environment. For example, Verónica, described earlier as an example of a respondent who cited proactive motivations for naturalization, shares her views on this issue:

I say [the politicians] are wrong because we Mexicans come to this country to work… They simply see a Mexican and they want to arrest you for any small thing for the simple fact they think you are Mexican.

Many respondents believe that Latines are singled out in national rhetoric, which leads to discrimination. Of the 18 participants who expressed this sentiment, nearly one-fourth characterize current policies and treatment as outright racist. For example, Linda, who has been in the U.S. for 20 years and does not fear for her family’s deportability, explains,

I support the students, the Dreamers. I support those who want to study and help the students. And the President—I don’t agree with him. Racism has always been here but now it is worse. He has stoked the fire.

Forty-four-year-old Erlinda agrees. She has lived in the U.S. for 21 years, working in a factory. Without speaking English and with no education to speak of, she cannot aspire to more. The discrimination she experiences at work, however, motivates her to naturalize. She notes,

There is a lot of racism. I think it is worse now. In my work, when I arrived, they called me wetback [sic]). I would just look at them—because we are all good workers—but they don’t like us. I have to learn the language, so they won’t look at me strangely. I have to have at least a voice and a vote so I can fight back and defend myself.

Erlinda’s main motivation was pragmatic, closely followed by proactive. She feels discriminated against at work and believes she deserves better benefits and to experience a workplace free of racism. Becoming a citizen to have a say in the leaders who make laws is one way to protect herself and her co-workers. In line with ethnic resilience scholars, several participants in this study seek to naturalize in response to collective discrimination and racism (Logan et al. 2012; Pantoja et al. 2001; Portes and Curtis 1987). In the process of claiming the right to vote and have a say in future policy and leadership, Latine LPRs also assert a right to belong that goes beyond the individual to the collective.

The nuanced importance of context is further demonstrated by the fact that 29 of the 31 participants perceived the national discussions of immigrants as negative; the remaining two considered them neutral. However, over half of the participants believed that the Bryan/College Station environment was positive. They felt well treated by local law enforcement and the general population. Only 23 percent experienced a negative local context of reception. This dichotomous reception between the national and local context probably explains why defensive motivations undergird most individuals’ narratives but are not their primary motivation for naturalization. A positive local context of reception mediates the larger national anti-immigrant rhetoric that President Trump’s nativism has inflamed.

Underpinning the majority of our Latine participants’ intentions to naturalize is the fear of family separation. They seek to become citizens as soon as possible to petition for family before rules change and make them ineligible to naturalize. They want to vote to have a voice in how immigrants and Latines are treated. They aim to protect family unity. What we see in these 31 Latine LPRs’ words is that families are actively engaged in cooperative strategies to collectively navigate a hostile national political environment, by claiming civil, political, and social rights through pragmatic, proactive, and defensive strategies.

Moreover, the political climate has gone from bad to worse. While President Biden increased the number of asylees and refugees and provided parole to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, he was ultimately unable to pass many of his immigration policies. President Biden used a carrot-and-stick approach, significantly augmenting legal pathways at the border through the CBP One app, while increasing interdiction of irregular border crossings, with the help of the Mexican government (Chishti et al. 2024; Putzel-Kavanaugh and Ruiz Soto 2024). While Biden was unable to fulfill his promise of legalizing millions and overturning Trump’s immigration policies, 3.5 million naturalizations occurred during his administration, more than under any other president (Chishti et al. 2024). During his first 100 days in office in his second administration, President Trump dismantled Biden’s legal pathways, not only closing CBP One but also putting those individuals who entered legally through the app in removal proceedings. He also ended Temporary Protected Status for persons from Venezuela, Haiti, Afghanistan, Cameroon, and Nepal. In addition, he has cancelled refugee resettlement for all except White South Afrikaaners, called for the end of birthright citizenship, and increased scrutiny of LPRs and international students. Important for our participants, Trump has narrowed public benefits for LPRs, cancelled funds for programs supporting naturalization, and increased immigration enforcement (Chishti and Bush-Joseph 2025). How this will affect naturalization rates is still to be seen but our study suggests that underlying concerns about the deportation of loved ones and changes to the naturalization process will increase the number of naturalizations. While our individuals shared multiple reasons for becoming citizens, they made clear they are more than individuals. They are part of families and communities at risk. Thus, they seek more than formal citizenship; they desire substantive citizenship with political, social, and civil rights in order to be full participants in the life of our shared nation.