Even for legal immigrants, the path to US citizenship is not paved with gold

This Monday, the Migrant Integration Policy Index will be launched in the US with a public debate in the nation’s capital. MIPEX finds that once immigrants get a legal status in the US, the path to citizenship is still not paved with gold, as many Americans readily assume in the often vitriolic debates over immigration. Without a comprehensive integration strategy, America is falling behind many other leading countries of immigration...With all the headlines on politicians and States sparring over immigration, Americans seem to be united only in their certainty that the system is broken and their disappointment in Washington to fix it. Polls like the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends show that a majority of Americans still believe in the slow but steady process of integration. A report commissioned by the Migration Policy Institute found that integration on 5 key statistics was steady, but highly uneven, without much help from specific government policies. Still, many European policymakers, anxious over immigration, look to the US as one of their models for integration policy, with its Green Cards, its Citizenship Ceremonies, and its Motto of “e pluribus unum.”...
 
Read in full on the MIPEX Blog