For young male immigrants, naturalization facilitates assimilation into the U.S. labor market. Following naturalization, immigrants gain access to public‐sector, white‐collar, and union jobs, and wage growth accelerates—consistent with removal of employment barriers. The faster wage growth of immigrants who naturalize might alternatively result from greater human capital investment prior to naturalization, stemming from a long‐term commitment to U.S. labor markets, but there is no evidence that wage growth accelerates or the distribution of jobs improves until citizenship is attained. Finally, the gains from naturalization are greater for immigrants from less‐developed countries and persist when we control for unobserved productivity.

Life cycle employment of minority labor migrants who entered Norway in the early 1970s diverges from that of natives. Immigrant employment was nearly complete during early years but declined to 50% by the year 2000 (compared to 87% for a native comparison group). We find that immigrant employment is particularly sensitive to the business cycle and that economic downturns of the 1980s and 1990s accelerated their labor market exit. We trace part of the decline to migrants being overrepresented in shrinking industries. But we also identify welfare disincentives that contribute to poor life cycle employment performance of immigrants with many dependent family members.