Earned Citizenship

The migration and settlement of 11 million unauthorized immigrants is among the leading political challenges facing the United States today. But what do the state and citizens owe to unauthorized immigrants, given non-citizen contributions to their adopted country and connections to citizens who depend on them? Earned Citizenship is a normative intervention in migration and citizenship studies that advances the proposition that long-term unauthorized immigrant residents should be able to earn legalization and a pathway to citizenship through service to citizens in their adopted communities.