Why Birthright Citizenship Matters for Immigrant Children: Short- and Long-Run Impacts on Educational Integration

Naturalization and citizenship: Who benefits?

“…The most convincing proof comes from quasi-experimental evidence that exploits specific features or reforms of citizenship laws to shed light on the benefits of citizenship [4], [8], [9], [10]. In these studies, reforms create different eligibility criteria for citizenship among immigrants depending on their year of arrival and birth year, for instance.…”

“…The authors also thank Nicolas Keller for collaboration on the research project. Version 2 of the article includes further evidence on the economic and social effects of naturalization for immigrants and adds new "Key references" [8], [9], [10], [13].…”

Do Human Capital Decisions Respond to the Returns to Education? Evidence from DACA

“…Changing the cost of college, and hence the returns, through financial aid has also been found to increase post-secondary attainment; but there has been little evidence that aid enters into longer-term planning, such as by affecting the high school graduation decision(Deming and Dynarski, 2009).3 The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) provided legal status to undocumented immigrants that entered the US before 1982 and met other criteria. In a similar vein,Liscow and Woolston (2016) andFelfe, Rainer and Saurer (2016) analyze the impact of citizenship on childhood and teenage schooling. However, the effect of citizenship may be quite different than a temporary or permanent amnesty, and the mixed-citizen families inLiscow and Woolston (2016) are not necessarily representative of all undocumented youth.…”

Caught between Cultures: Unintended Consequences of Improving Opportunity for Immigrant Girls

“…The current paper is also related to two papers which study the same reform and find that increasing immigrant opportunities through birthright citizenship improves educational outcomes using register data (Felfe et al 2020) and cooperation with natives using a lab-in-the-field experiment (Felfe et al 2019). These effects are entirely a male phenomenon, raising the puzzle of why immigrant boys seem to benefit from the reform, but immigrant girls do not.…”

“…The most prominent aspect of this reform related to the acquisition of citizenship at birth. We discuss the background and details of this reform in some of our previous work (Felfe et al 2019(Felfe et al , 2020, and so only briefly repeat the most relevant details here. Prior to January 1, 2000, citizenship at birth was granted according to jus sanguinis (right of blood), i.e., children became German citizens only in cases in which at least one parent held German citizenship.…”