How have naturalization rates (percent of eligible immigrants who naturalize) changed by country of origin since 2015?
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Executive summary
Naturalization activity in the United States has risen in absolute terms since 2015—annual naturalizations climbed into the 800,000s by FY2024—while the share of eligible immigrants who actually naturalize shows persistent variation by country of origin, with high rates among Asian-origin groups (notably India) and consistently lower rates among many Latin American-origin groups, especially Mexico [1] [2] [3] [4]. Available federal snapshots and scholarly analyses point to two simultaneous dynamics since 2015: growing flows of new citizens from long-standing source countries (Mexico, India, Philippines) and slow-moving compositional shifts in eligibility and take-up that keep national averages from telling the full story by origin [1] [5] [6].
1. Rising totals but not uniform uptake: national naturalizations increased while country-level rates diverged
Federal reports show that the count of people naturalizing rose to roughly 818,000 in FY2024, with USCIS listing Mexico, India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic and Vietnam among the largest country-of-birth shares (Mexico alone was about 13.1–13.2% of naturalizations in FY2024) [2] [1] [5]. That numeric growth, however, does not mean equal increases in the percentage of eligible immigrants who naturalize across origin groups: long-term research finds substantial variation rooted in language, proximity, socioeconomic status and eligibility timing [4] [7].
2. India: one of the clearest gainers in naturalization rate to 2015, and a large numeric contributor later
Pew Research Center analysis covering 2005–2015 documents one of the largest increases in naturalization rates occurring among immigrants from India—moving to among the highest eligible-group rates by 2015—a trend that helps explain why India becomes a major numeric source of new citizens in later fiscal years (Pew’s estimates and USCIS FY2024 share together) [3] [1]. In plain terms, India’s eligible population both naturalized at higher rates by 2015 and continued to appear prominently in the annual counts through 2024 [3] [1].
3. Mexico: largest numeric share but lower eligible-group naturalization rates
Mexico produced the largest number of new citizens annually (roughly 107,000–111,000 in recent fiscal years), yet long-standing analyses show Mexican- origin eligible immigrants have comparatively low naturalization take-up—around the low 40s percent as of 2015—driven by factors such as proximity, lower English proficiency and economic barriers [1] [5] [4]. Thus Mexico’s dominance in raw naturalization counts coexists with a lower percent-of-eligible who naturalize, because Mexico comprised a very large share of the eligible population in 2015 [4].
4. Latin America and geographic proximity: consistently lower rates of take-up
Studies and policy briefs note a regional pattern: immigrants from Latin America, particularly those from neighboring countries, often naturalize at lower rates than many Asian and Caribbean groups, plausibly because ease of travel and stronger home-country ties reduce incentives to acquire U.S. citizenship—Mexico exemplifies this pattern in both the data and the literature [7] [4].
5. Smaller origin groups and the Caribbean: mixed patterns that complicate a single narrative
Some Caribbean-origin groups (Cuba, Dominican Republic) and certain smaller origin populations show higher naturalization propensities than neighboring Latin American countries, reflecting political and historical differences in migration pathways; migration-policy and DHS profiles emphasize these compositional differences among eligible pools that make cross-country comparisons nuanced [6] [8].
6. Data limits, measurement choices and what remains uncertain
Public sources provide robust counts of naturalizations by country of birth (USCIS, OHSS/ D H S) and multiyear rate estimates up through 2015 (Pew), but no single dataset in the reporting package produces annual percent-of-eligible naturalization rates by country for every year since 2015; researchers therefore combine flow counts with eligibility stock estimates to infer changes, and that approach can mask shifts in eligibility composition, fee-waiver access, processing backlogs, or policy changes that also affect take-up [1] [3] [9]. Where available, trend statements come from Pew’s pre-2015 rate analysis and government flow counts through FY2024, and any claim about percent-point changes after 2015 must be framed as inferred from these complementary sources rather than from a single continuous rate series [3] [2] [10].