A pathway to citizenship by contributing in relationships: Earning the opportunity to finally call America home

The migration and settlement of 11 million unauthorized immigrants to the United States is among the leading challenges facing its residents today. The normative issue that underlies debates about policy responses to this problem is that immigration and citizenship laws are both under and over inclusive of claims to inclusion. They are over-inclusive when persons without strong attachments to members of the political community who have not contributed to their collective well-being can claim citizenship simply by being born there. But the more significant problem is that immigration laws do not sufficiently include prospective citizens who are long-term residents in the process of developing extensive community ties. Immigration and citizenship laws are under-inclusive when they fail to recognize the contributions of non-citizen residents when they assume responsibilities to citizens in these relationships.;In this dissertation, I argue that the claims to inclusion of long-term adult non-citizen residents ought to be resolved in part by recognizing the contributions they make to the community in the context of the relationships they develop there as residents as a form of earned citizenship. Relationships also matter for how we evaluate contributions, because we are concerned about how non-citizens are benefitting citizens. Citizens may have a legitimate claim to exclude some non-citizens. But citizens who want to enact more exclusionary admissions or enforcement policies have to justify these measures to their compatriots whose family members stand to be deported as a result.;Apart from contribution-based claims, I propose that three types of social membership claims also should be considered as bases for inclusion. The first two are based on relationships of dependence, where citizens rely on guardianship and care by non-citizens (including children and parents) and interdependence in relationships where adults of different legal statuses support each other (including spouses). Young people who are developing ties to their community in school have an independent social membership claim to inclusion. So long as they stay in the community where they were educated and socialized from a young age, they should be regarded as citizens just like their native-born peers and younger siblings.