Cities Creating Citizens: Policy Feedback and the Effects of Local Naturalization Support on Immigrant Civic Engagement

ABSTRACT Despite an increasingly hostile federal stance towards immigrants, cities across the United States have passed policies and implemented programs that help eligible immigrants on their path to citizenship. This paper examines the effects of these local policies on immigrants' political behavior and sense of civic efficacy. Using a multi‐method approach combining national survey data with qualitative interviews and a survey of participants from the City of San Francisco's Pathways to Citizenship Initiative, it finds that receiving local naturalization support affects the way immigrants behave and understand themselves as citizens. Immigrants who received support from their city government through the naturalization process have higher levels of political engagement and civic efficacy than those who navigated the process alone. These findings extend policy feedback to the local level, showing how local policies produce effects for target populations within a conflicting federal context. They have implications for our understanding of policy feedback more broadly, and the role local governments play in helping immigrants become full citizens and political actors.