The New Immigrant Survey is a new plan for nationally representative longitu-dinal studies of immigrants and their children that promises to provide new kinds of data that will help answer many of the important questions about im-migration and concomitantly shed light on basic aspects of human development.

Sampling Frame The sampling frame is based on the electronic administrative records compiled for new immi-grants by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly, the INS). The first full cohort of the New Immigrant Survey, NIS-2003-1, sampled immigrants granted legal per-manent residency (LPRs) during May-November 2003. The design calls for selection of two samples: (1) an Adult Sample consisting of 12,500 adult immigrants with a response rate of 68.6%; (2) a Child Sample described sepa-rately. Class of admission for interviewed immi-grants is shown in Table 1. A follow-up survey, NIS-2003-2 was conducted with 8,456 of the adult respondents from NIS-2003-1 with a response rate of 46.1%. Data will be released end of Summer 2013.

Fielding The baseline survey (NIS-2003-1) was in the field in the period June 2003 to June 2004. Survey instruments were translated into seven languages (Chinese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese) and key concepts and consent forms into an additional seven languages (Arabic, Farsi, French, Gujarati, Hindi/Urdu, Serbo-Croatian, and Ukrainian). Interviews were com-pleted in the language of choice of the respondent (Table 2). 60% of Adult Sample interviews were administered by phone; the re-mainder were administered in-person. Immigrants were inter-viewed as soon as possible after admission to permanent resi-dence. NIS-2003-2 was in the field from June 2007 to October 2009. Survey instruments (including consent forms) were trans-lated into ten languages (seven languages used in baseline plus Amharic, Arabic, and Creole). NIS-2003-2 was designed as a two-phase locating effort: 1) telephone effort (76%); 2) in-person effort with remainder respondents.

English 44.9% Spanish 24.1% Chinese 5.2% Russian 3.9% Vietnamese 2.2% Arabic 1.5% Korean 1.2% Tagalog 1.2% Indian language 2.1% Other European 4.4% Other Non-Europ 4.8% Other 1.2%

Total 100.0%

41.9% 28.9%

5.3% 3.0% 2.7% 1.3% 1.1% 1.3% 2.3% 3.2% 4.3% 1.1%

100.0% Unk., Non-English 3.2% 3.6%

Languages in data Unwghtd Weighted Table 2. Language of Interview. N=8,573

New Immigrant Survey: Adult Sample

Table 1. Class of Admission of Adult Sample Immigrants. N=8,573

Principal Investigators Guillermina Jasso, New York University Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University Mark R. Rosenzweig, Yale University James P. Smith, RAND Corporation

Project Director: Monica Espinoza Higgins

Postdoctoral Researcher: Bilesha Weeraratne

Associate Project Manager: Kimberly Torres

Visa types in data Unweighted Weighted

Spouse of U.S. Citizen 16.7% 34.2% Spouse of Legal Permanent Resident 2.4% 2.4%

Parent of U.S. Citizen 11.6% 11.9% Child of U.S. Citizen 3.3% 3.4% Family Fourth Preference 6.2% 6.4% Employment Preferences 19.5% 9.6% Diversity Immigrants 16.9% 8.1% Refugee 6.5% 6.6% Legalization 7.7% 8.0% Other 9.2% 9.4%

Total 100% 100%

Data NIS-2003-1: Data, codebooks and questionnaires are available on the NIS website, http://nis.princeton.edu. Data are available for download by all researchers in SAS, Stata and SPSS formats.

NIS-2003-2: Data expected in late 2013.

Adult Sample: by the numbers. NIS-2003-1: 8,573 immigrants completed the Adult Sample Interview; 4,334 spouses completed the Spouse Interview; 1,072 children ages 8-12 completed the Child Interview; 2,551 children completed the Memory for Digit Span assessment; and 2,421 children completed select Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Achievement. NIS-2003-2: 3,902 immigrants completed the Adult Sample Interview, 350 sponsor parents completed the Child Proxy in-terview, and 41 respondents who were in the child sample in round 1 completed new adult main child interview.

Questionnaire Content NIS survey instruments for the baseline round obtained infor-mation on a variety of topics, including health, schooling, mar-riage and family, languages and English language skills, labor force participation, earnings, use of government services, net-works, travel, and religion. In NIS-2003-2, the instruments track changes over time. A large component of the NIS survey instruments is/will be comparable to instruments used in the major U.S. longitudinal surveys, thus facilitating comparisons of immigrants and the native-born.

Table 3. Country of Birth of Adult Sample Immigrants. N=8,573

Funding The NIS is supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Aging and the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (HD33843); the National Science Foundation (SRS-9907421 and SES-0096867); the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evalua-tion, HHS; and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

For more information E-mail: nisopr@princeton.edu

Web: http://nis.princeton.edu

Importance of NIS The experiences of the different types of noncitizens, such as LPRs, legal nonimmigrants and those who are in the United States illegally can be very different yet little data has been collected on these different types of foreign-born. The NIS attempts to remedy this information gap and to allow policymakers and researchers to answer questions on legal immigration, such as how different categories of immigrants assimilate and what their contributions and costs to the U.S. economy and society are, how many immigrants return to their home coun-tries, and what the relationship between legal and illegal immigration is. The NIS includes information on the class of admission through which the immigrant became an LPR and wheth-er the immigrant adjusted his or her status from a temporary visa or is a new arrival.

Response The NIS-2003-1 Adult Sample achieved a 68.6% response rate with 8,573 completed interviews. The NIS-2003-2 Adult Sample achieved a 46.1% response rate with 3,902 completed interviews.

Countries in data

Unweighted Weighted Mexico 13.6% 17.5% India 9.0% 7.3% El Salvador 5.7% 6.1% Philippines 6.0% 5.5% China 5.6% 5.4% Vietnam 2.6% 3.1% Guatemala 2.2% 2.4% Dominican Republic 2.0% 2.3% Colombia 1.6% 2.1% Haiti 1.8% 2.0% Cuba 1.7% 1.8% Jamaica 1.4% 1.7% Poland 2.3% 1.6% Nigeria 2.0% 1.5% Korea 1.7% 1.5% Russia 1.4% 1.4% Peru 1.3% 1.4% Ethiopia 2.3% 1.3% Canada 1.2% 1.3% Ukraine 1.7% 1.3% United Kingdom 1.2% 1.1%

Country total 68.0% 69.5% Add’l countries in regions Latin America & the Caribbean 5.8% 6.9% Europe & Central Asia 9.6% 8.3%

East & South Asia & the Pacific 6.9% 6.4% Middle East & North Africa 4.6% 4.4% Sub-Saharan Africa 4.6% 3.7% Oceania 0.4% 0.4% Unknown 0.2% 0.2%

Region total 32.0% 30.5% Overall total 100% 100%