75% of Children in Immigrant Households Live With Both Parents

Introduction

There is a version of the American Dream that most people, regardless of their political views, can agree on: a stable home, a two-parent household, children with access to opportunity, and a family with the resources and security to build toward the future. According to new research published by The Mendoza Law Firm, that version of the American Dream is being lived by immigrant families across the United States at rates that exceed those of native-born households,  and the data make a compelling case that the story of immigrant family life in America is one of strength, commitment, and remarkable resilience.

The research, which draws on data from multiple federal and demographic sources, finds that approximately 75% of children in immigrant households live with both married parents. Among U.S.-born families, that figure is 61%. The 14-percentage-point gap is not a marginal difference; it is a structural one, reflecting the central role that family cohesion plays in the immigrant experience and in the long-term integration of immigrant communities into American life.

Building Permanent Roots in America

This finding sits alongside a 51% homeownership rate among foreign-born households, a figure that, when combined with the family stability data, paints a picture of immigrant family life defined by permanence, investment, and intergenerational ambition. Owning a home and raising children in a two-parent household are not incidental features of immigrant life in America. They are the deliberate choices of families who have made a conscious, sustained commitment to building something lasting in this country.

“When I think about the families we serve at Mendoza Law, this data reflects exactly what I see every day. These are parents who have sacrificed enormously to give their children a stable foundation. They have navigated enormous uncertainty and complexity in the immigration system, and they have done it while keeping their families together, their households stable, and their eyes on the future. They deserve a legal system that matches their commitment.”

The context for these achievements matters deeply. The families behind these statistics are not navigating an easy system. Mendoza Law’s research documents that 6.48 million immigration applications are currently pending with USCIS, including more than 3.1 million family-based petitions. These are not applications from people who are new to the country or unfamiliar with the process. Many represent families who have been waiting for years, sometimes a decade or more, for the formal reunification or status change that would allow them to fully stabilize their legal situation.

The family-based petition backlog is particularly affecting because of who it impacts most directly: parents waiting to bring children to the United States, spouses separated across borders while applications are processed, and siblings who have been living apart for years while bureaucratic queues move slowly forward. Every pending family petition represents a household that is incomplete,  a family that is doing everything right, following every rule, and waiting for a system that is struggling to keep pace with demand.

For children growing up in immigrant households, the stakes of these delays are not abstract. Family stability research consistently shows that two-parent households with stable housing provide children with measurable advantages in educational attainment, economic mobility, and long-term health outcomes. The 75% two-parent household rate among immigrant families is, in this sense, not just a demographic statistic; it is a platform for generational upward mobility that benefits not only immigrant families but the broader communities, schools, and neighborhoods they are part of.

Understanding the Immigrant American Dream Index

Mendoza Law’s Immigrant American Dream Index, developed as part of this research, attempts to quantify these dynamics across six equally weighted pillars: stability, economic participation, family life, homeownership, workforce integration, and pathways to citizenship. The Index reveals a consistent pattern: immigrants are achieving the foundational milestones of the American Dream in measurable, documentable ways, often before formal citizenship is ever granted. The legal recognition that naturalization provides is the final step in a journey that, for most immigrant families, has already been substantially completed through years of work, contribution, and community investment.

The naturalization data adds a layer of poignancy to this picture. More than 640,000 naturalization applications are currently pending. The average applicant has already spent 7.5 years as a lawful permanent resident. Many of the parents behind those applications have raised American-born children, purchased homes, built businesses, and sent teenagers off to college, all while their own formal citizenship remains in a queue. They are, in every practical sense, fully integrated Americans waiting for paperwork to confirm what their lives have already demonstrated.

Conclusion

The broader national survey data that Mendoza Law incorporated into its research reveals something important about shared values. Eighty percent of Americans cite family life as a critical component of the American Dream. Eighty-three percent associate the Dream with personal freedom. These are not values that divide immigrant and native-born communities, they are the values that unite them. The immigrant families reflected in Mendoza Law’s research are not pursuing a different version of the American Dream. They are pursuing exactly the same one, with the same intensity and the same love for the families at the center of it.