The phone companies buy mailing lists and even tap vehicle registrations for names of immigrant households.

Intergenerational mobility is particularly apparent in immigrant households.

But they had entered a three-generation immigrant household where everyone was an American citizen by naturalization or birth.

The national median income for households of five people, the average size of immigrant households, is $37,000.

In many immigrant households, at least one parent is undocumented, but the children, having been born in the United States, are citizens.

Across the country this means that immigrant households contributed $2.6 billion more than their share to the public purse.

Explanations for this include that immigrant households tend to be larger, and have more wage earners, increasing taxes.

Such a settlement may be the only affordable shelter, within easy access to employment and education, for a new immigrant household in the city.

In fiscal terms, the panel said, immigrant households are costly at first, mainly because of the public education costs they impose on state and local governments.

More than half the school-age children in New York City come from immigrant households.