Caught Between Rights and Vows: The Negative Impacts of U.S. Spousal Reunification Policies on Mixed-Status, Transnational Families with Low “Importability”

Abstract

This study examines how U.S. immigration policies enact legal violence and multigenerational punishment through the spousal reunification process, particularly in mixed-status, transnational families. Building on the concept of “deportability,” we introduce “importability” to describe a beneficiary’s potential to secure permanent residency, which varies according to social markers such as race, gender, and region of origin. Drawing from a content analysis of threads on the Immigration Pathways (IP) web forum, we analyze discussions among U.S. citizen petitioners navigating marriage-based green card applications, with a focus on experiences involving administrative processing (AP) (i.e., marriage fraud investigations). Our findings show that couples who do not align with the state’s conception of “proper” family—particularly U.S. citizen women petitioning for Black African partners—face intensified scrutiny, long delays, and burdensome requirements, including DNA tests and surveillance. These bureaucratic obstacles produce prolonged family separation, financial strain, and diminished sense of belonging, especially for children in single-parent households. Through the lens of “importability,” we reveal how legal violence and multigenerational punishment of immigration policies on mixed-status families beyond deportation threats, functioning as a gatekeeping mechanism that disproportionately affects marginalized families. This research highlights the understudied consequences of immigration policies on citizen petitioners and contributes to a broader understanding of inequality in U.S. immigration enforcement.

1. Introduction

Research shows that U.S. deportation policies create legal violence (Menjívar and Abrego 2012). Legal violence is the suffering inflicted by laws that severely restrict the daily lives of their intended targets, specifically undocumented immigrants (Menjívar and Abrego 2012). An individual’s “deportability,” or likelihood of being deported, differs based on various social factors, such as race, gender, and immigrant generation that influences “whether, when, and how” undocumented individuals experience the impacts of these laws (De Genova 2002). Undocumented immigrants live in constant fear and engage in risk management strategies to cope with heightened state scrutiny, like limiting their participation in everyday activities to avoid detention (Menjívar 2011; Sigona 2012). This suffering extends to their citizen family members who share in the consequences of the detention and deportation process and must also adopt risk management strategies (Enriquez 2015). The laws’ adverse effects on mixed-status families contribute to multigenerational punishment, where the social and financial costs resulting from these policies can last for generations (Enriquez 2015).

However, how immigration policies impact mixed-status families involved in other areas of U.S. immigration is undertheorized. The family unit is a fundamental social right. Thus, we will focus on the experiences of citizen partners from mixed-status, transnational families. These families consist of U.S. citizen members who are appealing or petitioning for U.S. immigration to grant permanent residency to an immediate, non-citizen family member living outside the United States. Many of these families already live apart but hope to reunify through the immigration process. U.S. citizens can petition for green cards for foreign spouses (i.e., beneficiaries), needing to prove their relationship’s authenticity without clear guidelines from immigration officials (Rogers 2012). Officials often evaluate evidence based on their views of what constitutes a “real” family (D’Aoust 2013; Longo 2022; Bonjour and de Hart 2013). If fraud is suspected, couples may face administrative processing (AP), which can delay approval for years—some wait up to ten years, while others may never reunify (Pennsylvania State University Law School’s Center for Immigrants’ Rights 2024; Rogers 2012). Yet, there is little research on the impacts of these policies, procedures, and outcomes on such families.

Thus, this study explores “whether, when, and how” (De Genova 2002) mixed-status, transnational couples and families are affected by marriage fraud policies during the U.S. spousal reunification process. To do this, we analyze the Immigration Pathways1 (IP) web forum, where citizen petitioners seek advice from those who have successfully navigated the reunification process. The forum is divided into regional sections based on the beneficiary’s origin, enabling discussion of regional-specific immigration challenges. Through content analysis, we examine conversation threads related to administrative processing across all regional sub-forums to uncover where and when the process arises and how U.S. petitioners in these discussions describe their experiences and impacts on their families. In doing so, we demonstrate how the state selectively facilitates, restricts, or creates uncertainty around access to the fundamental social right of family, thereby reproducing existing social inequalities. We introduce the concept of “importability” to understand how immigration policies can affect who gets to migrate to the United States and how those policies can reinforce social inequalities, even among citizen family members already living in the U.S., particularly the ability to live with one’s family, a fundamental social right. “Importability” refers to the beneficiary’s potential to obtain access to permanent residency through family reunification. Similarly to the concept of “deportability” (De Genova 2002), “importability” varies based on the beneficiary’s social markers, including their gender, race, and nationality. It also depends on how closely the couple can align themselves with the state’s racialized, gendered, and classed definition of the family ideal. We use the term importability to highlight how the state constructs and enforces hierarchies of desirability—racial, gendered, national, and otherwise—in determining which family relationships are deemed legitimate for immigration. In doing so, importability parallels deportability, drawing attention not only to exclusion but also to the selective inclusion practices that reproduce existing inequalities. The concept also builds on and contributes to scholarship examining the intersections of political and moral economies within family reunification regimes (e.g., Bonjour and de Hart 2013, 2021; D’Aoust 2013, 2018, 2022; Longo 2018, 2022).

We find that “importability” influences the extent of legal violence and multigenerational punishment resulting from U.S. spousal reunification policies that mixed-status, transnational families incur. Although no regional forum is exempt from marriage fraud investigations, a disproportionate number of conversations documenting the negative experiences and impacts of AP unfold in regional forums where beneficiaries are what the state considers “undesirable” and families cannot “naturally” align with the U.S. hegemonic family ideal. In particular, we find that U.S. citizen women petitioning for Black partners from sub-Saharan Africa and the couple’s citizen children, experience significant adverse effects from administrative processing. They face issues like long delays, unannounced home visits from consulate officers, surveillance, DNA tests, and added fees, causing high anxiety for their families. Many feel their relationships are targeted by bureaucracy, diminishing their sense of national belonging and ability to exercise their citizenship rights. They also worry about their children, who endure separation from one parent and economic insecurity in single-income households.

We argue that “deportability,” like “importability,” reveals how the immigration process policies police the formation of “undesirable” families more broadly, hindering their access to citizenship, resources, and social mobility. U.S. citizens whose petitions for family reunification are denied face a difficult choice. They must either sacrifice their privileges and fundamental rights as citizens to live and thrive in their own country by permanently living apart from their spouses, or they must choose to fulfill their vows to their partners and families by relocating to the beneficiary’s country. These findings enhance our understanding of the ways legal violence and multigenerational punishment manifest within the broader U.S. immigration system.

2. From Discriminatory Laws to “Deportability”: Policing the “Undesirable Family” in the U.S.

The state has always regulated the family and intimate relationships for state-building and safeguarding the nation’s and citizenry’s integrity (Bonizzoni 2018), thereby controlling access to territory, resources, and membership (Macklin 2022). Legal violence and multigenerational punishment have emerged through U.S. immigration and citizenship laws, primarily due to the state’s need to control family formation. Early lawmakers used the white, patriarchal family as a model for citizenship rights and national identity, with white men as full citizens and heads of household, while women and people of color were subordinate (Hill Collins 2006). Deemed the purveyors of racial purity and culture, white women’s citizenship was linked to their husbands, and people of color were denied citizenship rights altogether (Hill Collins 2006; Lee 2013). As a result, regulating family formation was essential for maintaining internal racial and gender hierarchies.

Discriminatory laws initially governed citizenship, immigration, and interracial relationships (Bonner and Wilder 2014; Jones-Brown 2000; Williams and Murphy 1990). Whiteness was needed for citizenship (Lee 2013), making it critical to prevent “undesirable” family formations. Women could not petition for foreign spouses or marry non-citizens without risking their citizenship (Lee 2013). Policies initially barred Japanese and Chinese immigrants due to perceived sexual immorality, and national quotas later restricted other immigrants of color (Nagel 2003; Pearce et al. 2011). Law enforcement actively policed intimate relationships, especially between white women and men of color, using invasive tactics to gather evidence (Equal Justice Initiative 2024). Couples claiming the same race underwent blood tests for verification, and investigators would conduct surprise visits to confirm their relationships (Coughlin 2010).

Although U.S. immigration and citizenship laws have shifted toward ostensibly race-neutral language since the Civil Rights Movement, colonial logics of national identity and family continue to shape their interpretation and enforcement (Turner 2015; Hing 2004). A growing body of scholarship shows that immigration policy operates as a selective and hierarchical system, with the state stratifying legal status based on race, class, gender, nationality, and mode of entry (Aptekar and Hsin 2023; Cebulko 2025). These policies rely heavily on state discretion, allowing officials to apply racialized and gendered assumptions in decisions about who may enter, remain, or reunite with family (DeLaney 2023; De Genova 2002; Golash-Boza 2015). As a result, enforcement disproportionately targets working-class Latino and Black men, constructing them—and by extension, their families—as “undesirable” (Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2013). This legal violence not only affects those directly subject to deportation but also punishes citizen family members, particularly in mixed-status households, who face constant fear of separation and surveillance (Enriquez 2015; Menjívar 2011; Zayas et al. 2015; Martinez-Aranda 2023). Ideologies about which families are legitimate or worthy of protection thus work in tandem with immigration policy to reproduce racialized and gendered inequalities under the guise of legal neutrality. U.S. citizen children experience significant multigenerational punishment, with over six million living with an undocumented parent as of 2018 (Capps et al. 2007). Deportations often result in children losing their fathers and lead to an increase in single-mother households (Dreby 2012; Capps et al. 2007). Deported fathers report that their partners struggle financially to support themselves and their children (Cruz 2020). The high costs of immigration processes hinder families’ ability to contest detention and deportation (American Immigration Council 2020), while immigration enforcement adversely affects children’s mental health and development (Capps et al. 2007). Parents facing deportation must choose whether to take their U.S. citizen children with them or risk leaving them behind without assurance of regaining custody (American Immigration Council 2020).

However, there is limited exploration of how mixed-status, transnational families navigate the U.S. immigration process for family reunification and experience legal violence and multigenerational punishment. Scholars focused on family reunification have shown that state officials and petitioners rely on hegemonic interpretations of family to understand reunification policies and assess the petitions from these families (D’Aoust 2018; Bonjour and de Hart 2013; Longo 2022). These normative interpretations can label some families as “desirable” and worthy of visas and others as “undesirable” and unworthy. However, it is important to turn our attention towards the ways in which petitioners, beneficiaries, or their U.S. citizen children navigate and cope with these processes and labels.

3. The Challenges of Cultivating “Desirable Families”: A History of the U.S. Spousal Reunification Process

Policing family reunification allows certain “desirable” populations to cross borders and access resources while creating barriers for those deemed “undesirable” (Enchautegui and Menjívar 2015). With the shift to a family preference system in U.S. immigration policy, any U.S. citizen, regardless of gender or race, is eligible to petition for permanent residency for their foreign spouse or partner. This system prioritizes immediate family members of U.S. citizens, allowing approved foreign partners to cross the border, find employment, and naturalize after three years (Rogers 2012).

However, despite the historical U.S. public discourse portraying the nation as a “nation of immigrants,” research shows that immigration laws have served as tools of racial exclusion that contradict civil rights ideals, reflecting and shaping domestic racial hierarchies by reinforcing patterns of discrimination and social stratification within the United States (Johnson 1998). Moreover, when immigrants are admitted based on family grounds, the state defines family itself (Strasser et al. 2009). Transnational and interracial marriages challenge these definitions, creating significant claims to citizenship rights and facilitating social and class mobility (Wray 2015). These marriages lead to families that challenge existing racial and ethnic boundaries (Wilkins 2004). Historically, the state has viewed citizen women crossing these boundaries as more problematic. Legislation like the War Brides Act and the Alien Fiancé Act allowed American men to bring in non-white partners despite quota restrictions (Longo 2024). In contrast, when citizen women exercise their agency abroad, choosing partners and asserting their right to grant citizenship, they are seen as redefining traditional notions of family and challenging male and state authority (Longo 2018).

U.S. family reunification policies, shaped by ideological constructions of “the family” (Hill Collins 2005), function through frameworks—such as marriage fraud prevention—that, as Myrdahl (2010) argues, reinforce internal racial hierarchies and secure national borders. State actors use ideological understandings of family to evaluate the worthiness of a petition, thereby creating moral economies of suspicion with family reunification regimes (e.g., Bonjour and de Hart 2013, 2021; D’Aoust 2013, 2018, 2022; Longo 2018, 2022). These policies and their implementation reflect and reproduce existing social inequalities through state practices that selectively determine which relationships are deemed legitimate for immigration. For instance, the 1986 Immigration Fraud Amendments (IMFA) were implemented to prevent “undesirable” immigrants from using marriage to gain residency (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2013). Couples must provide proof of a “valid and subsisting” relationships and address potential red flags, such as large age differences or short courtships, which may indicate marriage fraud (Batara 2023), even though the policy on what constitutes convincing proof is vague. Bureaucrats assess a couple’s evidence based on racialized pairings and their interpretation of a “proper family,” often deeming non-conforming couples as suspicious (D’Aoust 2018). Petitioners quickly recognize that, by marrying a foreign national, they face additional surveillance usually reserved for non-citizens (Macklin 2022). They may emphasize aspects of their relationships that align with state expectations, such as accentuating or downplaying certain social identities and performing “proper family” to demonstrate “deservingness” (Longo 2022, pp. 6–7). For those who cannot conform, the state exercises significant power over couples, creating uncertainty and barriers that complicate their ability to maintain family unity (López 2021).

We suggest that “importability” can account for variations of “who, what, and how” couples experience legal violence and multigenerational punishment across groups, but also within groups. The concept of “importability” is the likelihood that a beneficiary will be granted a visa, which varies based on the beneficiary’s gender, race, nationality, and the couple’s identities. Petitioners work to enhance their partners’ “importability,” so they can receive visa approval and reunify. For instance, the U.S. consulate views Nigeria as a high-risk country for marriage fraud, resulting in a Black Nigerian man’s relatively low “importability.” This can improve if he shares racial and age similarities with his partner but may decline if he is in a relationship with an older white woman.

We do not know how state officials actually think, but couples who align closely with the state’s expectations of family tend to find it easier to prove their eligibility for a visa (see Longo 2022, 2024). The beneficiaries in these relationships have a high level of importability. In contrast, those who deviate from these expectations face significant challenges throughout the immigration process (see Longo 2022). Such couples with beneficiaries deemed less “importable” may face denial of their applications or be subjected to administrative processing (AP), which can take an indeterminate amount of time. Navigating appeals or AP adds to the “administrative burden,” meaning that candidates incur costs related to learning how to negotiate the system, face prolonged waiting periods without information, and encounter the potential for bureaucratic inaction—all of which can be seen as forms of “bureaucratic violence” (Geoffrion and Guay 2025; Moynihan et al. 2022). Negative outcomes as the result of these investigations can affect the beneficiary and their family for generations to come.

4. Methods

We use an online ethnography and content analysis of conversation threads on “Immigration Pathways” (IP). On this large U.S. immigration, public, self-help website, members exchange advice about negotiating the spousal reunification process. In 2022, IP had over 113,000+ members who contributed to over four million posts throughout its multiple sub-forums, divided by visa types, special topics, and foreign partners’ regions of origin. Regional sub-forums consist of countries grouped into different areas of the world. Members mainly post within the sub-regional area, which contains their partners’ current country of origin, to seek advice on immigration challenges specific to that region. IP has archives of naturally unfolding conversations about multiple U.S. immigration issues and related socio-political events dating back to the early 2000s.

Although the site is public, users must become members and use consistent pseudonyms to post. Within each sub-forum, some members have cultivated reputations for being immigration “lay experts” through their collective experiences, observations, anecdotal evidence, and length of membership. Other members feel that these lay experts can predict what immigration officials will do or think about different cases with relative accuracy, even though there is no way of verifying it.

Members optionally disclose unverifiable demographic information. However, forum members report, either on their profile page or through conversations with other members that they are mainly U.S. citizen women and men in transnational relationships. Smaller groups of foreign nationals, often beneficiary partners, are present, as are bystanders who sign up but never post and only remain observers.

Data collection began in July 2010 when the first author conducted a digital ethnography. The researcher observed the website’s structure, social and group norms, immigration lingo, advice exchange on negotiating the challenges of the immigration process, commiserating, problem-solving, and site moderation. Conversation threads were subsequently scraped using the Python Programming language, version 3.5, in 2016 and again in 2022, using version 3.10.1.

We conducted a keyword search for terms such as “field investigation,” “administrative processing,” “AP,” and “fraud investigation” across all regional sub-forums.

Table 1. Administrative Processing Conversations and Gender by Regional Forum.

Regional Forum Name	Total # of Threads	# of Ap Threads	Proportion of Ap Threads to Other Topics	% of Posts by Female Users	% of Posts by Male Users	% of Posts by Users Who Do Not Gender Identify
Sub Saharan Africa (SSA)	4345	826	0.19	64%	15%	21%
Middle-East/North-Africa (MENA)	10,839	1519	0.15	74%	11%	15%
Latin America/Caribbean	9238	1291	0.14	81%	7%	12%
Belarus/Russia/Ukraine (BRU)	5175	726	0.14	10%	78%	12%
Southeast and South Asia	13,848	1939	0.14	52%	28%	20%
China	1402	171	0.12	16%	72%	12%
East and Pacific Asia	2316	258	0.11	26%	52%	22%
Continental Europe (excl. BRU/UK)	1992	141	0.07	85%	8%	7%
United-Kingdom (UK)	7042	279	0.04	63%	26%	11%
Australia/New-Zealand	1108	32	0.03	51%	30%	19%
Canada	16,038	486	0.03	51%	22%	27%

shows the IP regional forums, the total number of conversation threads (initial post and subsequent replies) in each sub-forum, and the number of conversation threads devoted to administrative processing (AP) per sub-forum. Column four represents the proportion of the number of AP conversation threads to all other topics on the sub-forum. The final three columns pertain to the percentage of posts by users’ reported online gender identity in each sub-forum.

To ensure the most useful, rich, and on-topic conversations, we purposively sample administrative processing conversation threads from each forum with between five and thirty replies from at least three or more members. Those with less often lacked substantive conversation, and those with more were off-topic. We based these criteria on the first author’s ethnographic experiences therein. Our final sample included 1986 conversation threads from across all regional sub-forums.

Both authors open-coded the threads based on emergent themes. Through an iterative process, we created a closed coding schema for analytic themes around race, gender, class, risk management strategies, national belonging, and citizenship and conversation topics, which included complications with the process, stress levels, financial hardships, invasive or unreasonable interview questions, field investigations, DNA-specific inquiries, and prolonged separation. In particular, we qualitatively focus on the Sub-Saharan African2 (SSA), Middle East/North Africa3 (MENA), Belarus/Russia/Ukraine (BRU), which has proportionally more conversation threads (i.e., initial posts and subsequent replies) devoted to this topic than other regional sub-forums. The SSA sub-forum consists of reportedly Black and white U.S. citizen women married to predominantly Black men from the region and petitioning for green cards on their partners’ behalf. The MENA regional forum has mainly white U.S. citizen women petitioning for Arab husbands, and the BRU forum is reportedly white U.S. citizen men largely marrying white women that they met on brokered websites (i.e., “mail order sites).

This study has limitations. First, this sample is not random. Forum members self-selected to visit the website, most likely to discuss their concerns about the visa application. The website is predominantly in English. Further, LGBTQ+ couples are not represented. However, these naturally occurring conversations are prone to less reactivity bias than face-to-face interviews (e.g., McMillan Cottom et al. 2017; Longo 2022), and the archive of conversations provides us with a temporal element. Lastly, we were unable to code the Latin America/Caribbean forum, since most of it was in Spanish or combinations of English and Spanish. Therefore, the insights from these families are notably absent. Future research should incorporate this region.

The following section illustrates the concept of “importability” through petitioner conversations regarding why particular couples are prone to AP and the various challenges that different couples experience in overcoming it. Then, we show how aspects of administrative processing, such as extended delays, unannounced visits to the beneficiary’s community, jobs and home, surveillance, DNA tests, and opaque appeals processes, are reminiscent of the experiences of mixed-status families, how the beneficiary and citizen-partner try to negotiate them, and how this shapes the citizen petitioners’ perceptions of belonging and citizenship status. The last section of the findings shows how citizen petitioners discuss the impacts of AP on their families, particularly their children, especially when petitions are denied, and couples must make difficult choices that can impact the family for generations. We conclude with a discussion about how the outcomes of deportation and high “deportability” and denial and low “importability” foster racialized and gendered citizenship and inequality without overtly discriminatory laws.

5. Importability: Accounting for “Whether, What, and How” Couples Experience Legal Violence

The state’s implementation of marriage fraud policies creates racial and gender inequalities among mixed-status transnational couples, especially for citizen women married to Black men from developing countries. These inequalities occur because officials often judge evidence based on their perceptions of what a “real” family looks like (D’Aoust 2013; Longo 2022; Bonjour and de Hart 2013). As a result, any couple that does not fit these expectations is treated with suspicion, regardless of the authenticity of their relationship. This scrutiny impacts the beneficiaries’ ability to be granted legal status or importability.

Importability, or the likelihood that a beneficiary will receive a U.S. visa, varies based on several factors, including the beneficiary’s regional location and their race. Immigration officials often classify countries in certain regions as “high-risk” for potential marriage fraud, leading to increased scrutiny (e.g., US Embassy and Consulates in China 2018; US Embassy and Consulates in Russia 2018). These high-risk areas typically include developing countries populated mainly by people of color or with complicated political relationships with the U.S. Consequently, importability is generally lower in these regions than in developed countries, which tend to have predominantly white, Western populations, or a positive alliance with the United States.

The variation in discussions about administrative processing (AP) across sub-forums highlights different levels of importability. It also highlights the state’s racialized and gendered selectivity within the implementation of bureaucratic red-tape and its power to inflict dire consequences for citizens and their families. While no nationality or couple is exempt from evaluation, AP mentions are less common in the Canadian, Australia/New Zealand, and United Kingdom forums. In contrast, there is more discussion in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Users from Canada and Australia often trivialize AP, calling it “just a bureaucratic hassle” involving “a few background checks and some delays.” Meanwhile, experienced SSA-forum members caution newcomers about the “inevitable,” “heartbreaking,” and “difficult” process that can “take forever” and “ruin your life.”

Importability also depends on the race, gender, and national identity of the beneficiaries. In one SSA forum, a white woman named Shayla1973 expressed frustration when her Kenyan husband, Maurice, received a “white sheet” (notice of administrative processing) after his interview. She questioned, “What more do they want?!?!? Why the hell are they doing this NOW?” Another member, 8MillEDear, bluntly replied, “He is black.” IDreamofHakeem20 added, “AP is almost automatic for black men from any African nation,” a sentiment shared by others.

In the MENA forum, discussions about Arab husbands often highlight the increased scrutiny they face as the result of the state’s perception of them as Islamic terrorists. One member noted, “Persons coming from T countries (Terrorist Countries) seem to have more security checks. Common names, your nationality, religion, education, relationship of applicant, travels and job can all be factors.”

Although the data do not reveal what immigration officers think, the discussions suggest that race and place play important roles in the scrutiny level. SSA-forum women believe their husbands face administrative processing due to their identities as Black men from developing nations. At the same time, MENA forum members link heightened scrutiny to the post-9/11 stigma surrounding Arab and Muslim men, perceived as threats to national security.

The couple’s ability to align with the U.S. hegemonic family influences their importability. Colonial ideas of national belonging and citizenship, which are rooted in this idealized family structure, continue to shape how officials interpret family reunification policies and evaluate the authenticity of petitioning couples (Turner 2015). As a result, a beneficiary’s importability improves when couples closely conform to the racialized, gendered, and class-based expectations of “the family.” Conversely, those who do not meet these expectations may find that the beneficiary’s importability is reduced.

In the Belarus/Russia/Ukraine sub-forum, older white men seeking relationships with younger white women through brokered dating agencies (commonly known as “mail order sites”) often express concerns about administrative processing (AP). This concern arises from the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (IMBRA), which requires additional background checks to protect beneficiaries from these agencies against domestic violence and sex trafficking. However, more experienced members tend to downplay these concerns, reassuring newcomers that it is “not a big deal.” For example, a seasoned member once told a newcomer that he was worried that a significant age gap with his wife might result in AP, that even a thirty-year difference is acceptable, and that an age gap can be a “good thing.”

Importability is shaped not only by the race, gender, and national identities of beneficiaries but also by the social identities of petitioners, which can amplify state scrutiny of their partners. Forum discussions suggest that interracial couples—especially those involving white citizen women and Black men—often experience heightened surveillance and prolonged processing times, reflecting how the state selectively enforces immigration policies along intersecting lines of race and gender.

In the SSA forum, a white woman married to a Somali man shares her frustration about her case being in administrative processing (AP) for over eight months. Another member, who successfully petitioned for her Nigerian husband, asks if they share the same race, suggesting it “usually helps,” while a new member questions whether race matters. Experienced members confirm it does. NigerianLove recounts that her husband was asked during their consulate interview why he would marry a white woman when he could choose any black woman he wanted. She states, “YES, the racial difference plays a big part, as well as gender and age prejudice.” Another member agrees, “Looking at the pattern of denials to white women petitioning for black spouses shows me the embassy has got some rather outdated ideas of race.” BeckiBricksHERE, a 45-year-old white woman married to a 31-year-old Kenyan man, interjects “I would also add age difference matters to (sic). If you are a white older woman and can’t bear children anymore or nearing menopause then that is even more suspicious to them.” She then adds that the consulate officer questioned why her husband wouldn’t prefer to marry someone who could have children, noting, “We are STILL in AP.”

Couples who align with traditional family ideals often find it easier for the beneficiary’s importability, influencing their experiences with administrative processing (AP). In the Belarus/Russia/Ukraine forum, members report fewer AP challenges due to the acceptance of men marrying younger partners from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Conversely, the SSA forum showcases a more diverse range of couples, where those similar in age, race, and education face fewer AP difficulties compared to interracial couples. This is particularly true when the petitioner is an older white woman with a younger husband of color from a lower socio-economic status. These couples encounter greater difficulties meeting state family expectations, impacting beneficiaries’ importability. White women are typically expected to “marry up” within their racial group, while beneficiaries married to citizen women who are considered past their reproductive prime are often viewed with skepticism. Many believe these women have nothing else to offer their partners other than their citizenship status, leading to assumptions of fraudulent relationships.

6. Navigating Legal Violence and the Burden of Risk Management Strategies

This section illustrates that, much like family members of undocumented individuals who face high levels of deportability (Enriquez 2015), citizen partners married to beneficiaries with low importability must negotiate risk management strategies and endure the consequences of the immigration process. Like U.S. citizens with highly deportable family members (Menjívar 2011), immigration policies require citizen family members to engage in risk management strategies that impact outcomes in gendered and racialized ways. Citizen spouses bear the heavy administrative burden of filing paperwork and gathering evidence, especially for couples who do not fit the state’s definition of a “proper” family. In low-importability cases, the evidence package is crucial to raising importability and persuading immigration officers for a visa.

Members use gendered risk management strategies to negotiate state scrutiny. SSA-forum women advise that family members write notarized character references to highlight a beneficiary’s potential as a good husband and provider, reinforcing traditional gender roles. Others suggest sharing photographs, chat logs, joint bank statements, and children’s birth certificates as a portrayal of them as a “real” family that shares biological children, gendered divisions of labor, and a comingling of finances. Others try to leverage their male relatives’ approval of the relationship to symbolize “genuineness.” User MakingOurWay noted that she anticipated AP and the consulate officer’s unscheduled visit to her partner’s family, so she sent framed wedding pictures to her mother-in-law’s house well in advance, stating, “I wanted the consulate officer to see the pictures and realize that my family, particularly my father, approved of him.”

They also use racialized risk management strategies, such as coaching beneficiaries for final consulate interviews. For instance, MENA forum petitioners coach their husbands on U.S. family cultural norms and how to address racial stigma. Understanding the impact of post-9/11 perceptions, they stress the importance of their Arab husbands conforming to the stereotype of an “American” husband. Their advice ranges from “Make sure he wears a new suit and tie!” to “For God’s sake, tell him not to shave his beard completely off the night before he goes for his interview. Dead giveaway that he has had the ‘jihadi’ beard that scares the shit out of consulate officers”.

When consulate officers refer petitions for administrative processing, citizen partners must prepare for various investigative tactics, including unscheduled field investigation visits to their partners’ hometowns abroad. During these visits, consulate officials interview neighbors, family, and friends about the couple’s relationship. SSA-forum women report these visits most frequently. One member describes, “Some had [consulate officers] visits to the village and neighborhood and questioned villagers…They may be sending field agents to watch and wait. See who your husband hangs with.” Others describe unscheduled visits to the family’s home, where they may ask questions about the couple’s relationship to anyone present at the time. Another petitioner recounts, “They only asked questions of [my husband’s] little brother and his mother, particularly if they were aware of our marriage. They both answered yes they were.”

Like citizen and undocumented members of mixed-status families, (Martinez-Aranda 2023, p. 11) the presence of a home visit is extremely distressing and anxiety-producing experience for all involved, including those living in the United States, especially if the home visit goes wrong. When home visits go awry, the stakes become higher as citizens must engage in risk management strategies that deftly balance exercising their privileges as citizens with the need to meet state officials’ perceptions of the family. For instance, in an SSA forum, MonicaNCooper, a white woman engaged to a Nigerian man, asks for advice on a problematic field visit. She shares that her fiancé’s mother refused to answer questions from a consulate officer who visited their home while he was at work because allegedly the officer did not identify themselves. A long-time forum member advised the petitioner to explain to the field investigator that her mother-in-law initially did not know their identity and later worried that her reluctance to answer questions might hurt her son’s case, even though she was trying to protect him. This risk management strategy leverages citizenship privileges, such as contacting state officials—something that non-citizens cannot do.

It also involves framing interactions according to societal ideas of a “proper family” (Bonjour and de Hart 2013) and traditional gender roles. In this case, describing the negative interaction with a state official as a misunderstanding due to an overprotective mother. These strategies are vital for citizen spouses petitioning on behalf of beneficiaries with low importability, since the AP investigation results will significantly influence the approval or denial of the beneficiary’s visa application.

Yet, citizen spouses married to beneficiaries with lower importability often find that the racialized and gendered perceptions of their partners negatively impact their ability to demonstrate the couple’s conformity to hegemonic family ideals. These perceptions vary across groups of beneficiaries of high and low importability and within different groups of beneficiaries with low importability. For instance, new MENA forum members often ask if having children indicates a “genuine relationship.” The consensus is that it does not; one member stated, “…You are the USC, you can happily have your baby and carry on with the process you wish. A baby does not grant grounds to expedite your case nor does it affect it in a negative way.” The state views Arab men from the MENA as national security risks while also seeing them as patriarchal figures shaped by cultural norms (Longo 2022). Therefore, biological children in MENA relationships do not significantly affect a couple’s case, making it easier for them to demonstrate that they are a “real” family.

Conversely, women in the SSA forum find it much more difficult. When asked the same question, members caution that immigration officials see biological children or pregnancies as marriage fraud indicators. One member warns, “Remember that in [the immigration officials’] minds a child is proof of sex, not love. Are you the same race? That will normally help. You need to show that you are a couple and you and the child are not an excuse for a green card.” Unlike Arab men, who are perceived as family-orientated, U.S. stereotypes depict Black men as irresponsible fathers, promiscuous partners, and “hustlers” (Hill Collins 2005). This reduces the importability of SSA-forum husbands, especially in interracial couples, making it hard for them to seem like a “genuine family.”

Risk management strategies can be extremely expensive, making them prohibitive for those with a limited amount of money. For example, the state may request proof of parentage for the biological children of couples applying for approval. When one SSA-forum petitioner asks if sharing a child with the beneficiary would impact her husband’s case, DWhorld warns, “Be prepared for DNA tests.” When the member asks if she could obtain the DNA test in advance as a preventative measure against AP, another peer responds, “If you don’t mind paying $600–800 take a chance…” Thus, petitioners can be constrained by cost, especially if they are on a limited income, which constrains the kinds of risk management strategies to preempt state scrutiny that they can use.

Although every regional forum mentions DNA testing, women in the SSA forum discuss how officials will frequently demand three-way DNA tests for their cases. The process also changes others’ perceptions about the citizenship status of citizen family members, seeing them as somehow “less” of a citizen. It is unsurprising that petitioners report feeling increasingly disenfranchised from their sense of national belonging and the sense of security that their citizenship status once gave them.

For example, WeWait, an African American petitioner with a Ghanaian husband, expresses her frustration: “When my husband went for his interview, the consulate officer said that he has to (delay) his approval based upon the results of a three-way DNA test. The test is to prove that our child is paternally his and maternally mine.” Some members responded that three-way DNA tests are becoming standard to prevent the so-called chain migration of foreign children. WeWait answers, “I AM a US citizen and she is HERE with ME in the US.” Another member follows up, “I assume you are a naturalized African immigrant?” WeWait replies exasperatedly, “I AM A US CITIZEN FROM BIRTH!!!!!! THIS IS WHY I DON’T UNDERSTAND!!!”

The history of biological testing and biological relationships to citizenship trace back to the pre-Civil Rights Movement when anti-miscegenation laws allowed law enforcement to administer blood tests for couples claiming to be a “proper” family (i.e., racially similar) (Coughlin 2010). Biological testing identifies what the state considers “undesirable” families to ensure they do not receive access to benefits that they are not entitled to. Therefore, AP can negatively impact citizen family members’ sense of citizenship status and national belonging. They recognize that the state is treating them with the same scrutiny reserved for non-citizens (Macklin 2022) and also see how this treatment extends to their citizen children. The next section will explore further how the outcomes of these policies lead to multigenerational punishment.

7. Caught Between Rights and Vows: AP Outcomes and Multigenerational Punishment

Like mixed-status families with undocumented members at high risk of deportation (Enriquez 2015), mixed-status transnational families with members who have low importability face multigenerational punishment during the immigration process and as a result of its outcomes. The state can selectively deny citizen family members the fundamental social right of family unity using its bureaucratic processes and powers. Consequently, many citizens of denied partners must decide between fighting the state for that right, often at considerable cost and expense and little guarantee of success, or their vows to their partners and family by finding a way to be together (or live apart) without the state.

For example, mixed-status families with undocumented members have difficulty contesting detention and deportation because of the high costs and fees associated with the immigration process (American Immigration Council 2020). Similarly, citizen family members incur significant expenses when petitioning for their partners, with filing fees and medical exam costs totaling USD 2890 as of January 2024 (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2024). This excludes additional fees associated with translating documents, DNA tests, attorneys, appeals, or refiles. Obtaining a fee waiver is difficult, as petitioners must live below 150% of the federal poverty level and prove “extreme financial hardship” beyond what is normal (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2024).

Bureaucratically imposed immigration fees create significant barriers to reunification for low-income couples, especially those with low-income citizen women and beneficiaries from developing countries. For instance, MississippiNative21, who is petitioning for her husband from Ghana, has been waiting to reunite with him for over five years while living in the United States with their five-year-old son, Ty. Most of this waiting time resulted from her inability to meet the minimum income requirement to sponsor him or to find a co-sponsor, which often leads to prolonged periods of separation (Walsdorf et al. 2019). It took MississippiNative21 more than two years to find a job that met the income requirement, and their petition is currently in administrative processing (AP).

The challenges couples encounter become more daunting during administrative processing. Financial costs and administrative burdens increase significantly, as U.S. citizen spouses often must cover extra state requirements like DNA tests, while facing long waiting periods without updates and potential bureaucratic delays.

Administrative processing (AP) can lead to prolonged separation and financial burdens that disproportionately impact families based on race and gender. Research shows that deportations often result in children losing their fathers, contributing to an increase in single-mother households (Dreby 2012; Capps et al. 2007). Women petitioners married to men of color from developing countries also report significant financial and emotional hardships related to the AP process. Although it is unclear if AP denials directly increase single-mother households or affect children’s relationships with their fathers, SSA-forum women highlight gendered struggles such as single motherhood, financial pressure, and mental exhaustion.

The administrative process leads to long family separations, significantly impacting mental health. Citizen spouses in administrative processing share their struggles in the “Coping with AP” discussion thread. BeeZEEWayTin notes, “The next time I see my fiancé, we will have been separated for over a year.” Alma01028474 adds, “We have been waiting for three years.” BassiBaebae43 shares, “I’m so tired and so depressed,” while CeeSea008 agrees, “It is exhausting and heartbreaking.”

Many SSA-forum women share their financial struggles of raising the couple’s children alone. Women petitioners, unable to reunite with their partners, often must rely on their income alone to carry the household. Many are “hanging on” and “just getting by,” “waiting for the moment that he is here with me to raise and support this family with me.” For couples who are denied and must either appeal or reapply, ongoing processing and legal fees add to the entire family’s financial burdens and these burdens impact separated families’ ability to visit one another.

Mixed-status families with undocumented members living in the United States experience high levels of anxiety and stress because the risk of deportation and potential family separation never ceases (Zayas et al. 2015). However, the mixed-status transnational families experience a different kind of anxiety and stress, since they are already separated. They fear that the state will deny them reunification, because there is no guarantee that petitions will be approved (Longo 2022).

Women petitioning for their partners express concern about the long-term effects of separation on their children. For instance, MississippiNative21, who is trying to bring her Ghanaian husband to the U.S. while living with their five-year-old son, Ty, worries about the lack of connection between them. She states the following:

“We try to video chat, but Ty often loses interest or falls asleep. He hasn’t seen Kwame since he was three, and it took time for Ty to warm up to him. I’m considering moving there, but I don’t want to leave my family or job. However, we want more kids, and Ty and I need [Kwame].”

Many petitioners are single mothers struggling financially or relying on family for support. JesusSaveUS shares, “I grew up without my dad. I don’t want that for my daughter, and Kobie is desperate to be with us.” Similarly, JesseCLA comments, “I’m sorry you’re going through this. I moved to Kenya with our child for this reason… I had to choose between living in my country and having a life with him.”

JesseCLA is not alone in considering a move to her husband’s country. Spouses facing petition denials must choose between their citizenship privileges and their marriage vows. They can appeal the decision or reapply, both of which are time-consuming and costly, and must decide whether to continue living apart.

While some couples end up divorcing or maintaining long-distance relationships, many women, especially those raising children alone, find it difficult to cope with the challenges of single motherhood. As a result, citizen spouses often choose to relocate abroad to reunite with their families, but those who are moving to partners from impoverished regions worry about the educational, economic, and social opportunities their children may lose, understanding that these choices can have lasting repercussions for future generations.

8. Discussion and Conclusions

As this study has demonstrated, U.S. immigration policy is not merely a set of bureaucratic procedures but a deeply selective and hierarchical system through which the state reinforces longstanding racial, gendered, and class inequalities. Although immigration and citizenship laws have shifted toward ostensibly neutral language since the Civil Rights Movement, their interpretation and enforcement remain grounded in colonial and patriarchal logics of nation and family (Turner 2015; Hing 2004; Hill Collins 2006). The state stratifies legal status based on race, nationality, class, gender, and mode of entry, channeling immigrants into vastly unequal trajectories of legal precarity and opportunity (Aptekar and Hsin 2023; Cebulko 2025). This stratification extends beyond formal legal frameworks: enforcement mechanisms disproportionately target working-class Latino and Black men through what has been described as a gendered and racialized “removal program” (Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2013), while whiteness, class privilege, and heteronormative family structures function as informal pathways to inclusion (Cebulko 2025; Enchautegui and Menjívar 2015; D’Aoust 2013, 2018).

At the heart of these dynamics is the state’s longstanding effort to regulate family formation as a means of preserving national identity. Historically, U.S. immigration and citizenship laws were designed around the white, patriarchal family, in which white men held full citizenship and authority over dependent spouses and children, while women and people of color were subordinated or excluded (Hill Collins 2006; Lee 2013). Laws once barred women from sponsoring foreign spouses and punished interracial unions by denying citizenship or stripping it altogether (Lee 2013). Japanese and Chinese immigrants were excluded based on perceived sexual and moral deviance, while racialized quotas and surveillance of couples—especially white women in relationships with men of color—sought to prevent “undesirable” family formations (Nagel 2003; Pearce et al. 2011; Equal Justice Initiative 2024; Bonner and Wilder 2014; Coughlin 2010). While laws now appear race-neutral, these ideologies persist through administrative discretion and enforcement practices that police which families are viewed as legitimate, fraudulent, or threatening (D’Aoust 2013, 2018; DeLaney 2023).

The consequences of these practices are especially acute for mixed-status families, who face both material and emotional burdens in their efforts to maintain family unity. Research on undocumented immigrants and mixed-status households within the U.S. shows that enforcement policies lead to multigenerational punishment, with citizen family members—especially children—suffering long-term harm from a system that targets their undocumented loved ones (Walsdorf et al. 2019; Capps et al. 2007; Dreby 2012; Enriquez 2015). Deportability is shaped not only by immigration status but by racialized and gendered perceptions of threat, with Latino and Black men often deemed highly deportable and, by extension, their families seen as “undesirable” (De Genova 2002; Golash-Boza 2015; DeLaney 2023). These logics extend into the realm of family reunification policy, where consular officers hold wide discretion and often rely on gendered and racialized assumptions to determine whether families are “genuine” or “fraudulent” (D’Aoust 2013, 2018; Enchautegui and Menjívar 2015).

Our findings contribute to this body of scholarship by highlighting how mixed-status transnational families—where a U.S. citizen petitions for a foreign spouse living abroad—experience similar forms of legal violence and multigenerational punishment. Petitioning families report prolonged separation, emotional stress, and financial hardship due to heightened scrutiny, denials, or indefinite administrative processing (Zayas et al. 2015; Martinez-Aranda 2023). Like domestic enforcement, consular investigations—such as unannounced home visits to assess the validity of a marriage—generate fear and anxiety for families already navigating long-distance relationships. Citizen spouses, often women, shoulder the emotional and economic burden of the process, raising children alone and incurring escalating costs for legal fees, appeals, and documentation (American Immigration Council 2020). Children born before reunification may grow up without ever living with one parent, and families struggle to maintain transnational ties amid uncertainty and financial strain (Cruz 2020).

These multigenerational consequences—emotional, economic, and developmental—reflect the broader role of immigration law in defining which families are allowed to live together under the protection of the state and which are punished for forming across borders and racial lines. U.S. citizen spouses face impossible decisions: whether to uproot their children and relocate abroad to maintain family unity or remain in the U.S. and risk permanent separation. These choices carry long-term effects on children’s well-being, parental relationships, and families’ social and economic mobility (American Immigration Council 2020; Capps et al. 2007; Dreby 2012; Cruz 2020). In this way, immigration policy continues to function as a powerful mechanism through which the state disciplines family life and reasserts racialized and gendered boundaries of national belonging.

The impacts on beneficiaries and their mixed-status, transnational U.S. families vary based on social identities. “Importability,” or the likelihood of obtaining a visa, is shaped by an immigrant’s race, gender, and nationality, affecting the legal violence and multigenerational punishment due to U.S. spousal reunification policies. While the data does not show overall trends of who is raising their beneficiary’s children in the United States as a single parent, Black and white U.S. citizen women married to Black men from developing countries discuss administrative processing the most. Thus, initial findings indicate that Black men, considered highly deportable (Golash-Boza 2015), may also be considered of low importability, making their families viewed as “undesirable.”

Family members of undocumented individuals at high risk of deportation and citizen family members of beneficiaries with low importability use different strategies to manage state scrutiny. Deportation processes aim to identify and remove those labeled as “undesirable,” influenced by gendered and racial biases (DeLaney 2023). Consequently, family members minimize and avoid state inspection during enforcement investigations (Enriquez 2015). In contrast, citizen spouses in AP actively seek to portray their families as “desirable” to gain access for their partners. Their strategies aim to enhance their partner’s perceived importability by navigating state assessments and presenting themselves as a genuine family according to the state’s ideals.

We do not claim that the hardships of deportation are equivalent to those of administrative processing. The heartache and suffering experienced by families with members facing incarceration in detention centers, as well as the challenges faced by undocumented individuals and their families in a hostile environment, cannot be compared. Beneficiaries denied a visa after undergoing administrative processing are not imprisoned; they are free to remain where they are. However, within two different aspects of U.S. immigration policy, there are similarities in the types of multigenerational punishments and legal injustices that citizen members of these mixed-status families endure.

Thus, we have argued that “importability,” like deportability, illustrates how immigration policies regulate the formation of “undesirable” families within the broader system. When examined together, these policies regimes hinder access to citizenship, resources, and social mobility in a coordinated manner. Historically, U.S. citizenship laws were closely tied to a white, patriarchal family structure, which limited citizenship based on race and gender. Although immigration laws have become more universal, the colonial legacy linking family to citizenship rights continues to influence how immigration policies are interpreted and implemented (Turner 2015). The state defines what constitutes a “desirable” family when allowing immigrants to enter based on family reunification (Strasser et al. 2009). Conversely, it designates certain families as “undesirable” when it deports a member of a mixed-status family or denies a family’s petition for reunification. As a result, those deemed desirable are granted access to citizenship, territory, and resources, while members of families classified as undesirable face restrictions in accessing these benefits—a burden especially felt by citizen women.

Women citizens who reported being in administrative processing or having their petitions denied often express feelings of alienation from their country. This alienation negatively impacts their sense of belonging and undermines their confidence in exercising their citizenship rights and privileges. They increasingly perceive their citizenship power as diminished due to their ties to non-citizen husbands, reflecting outdated gendered forms of citizenship that are no longer part of the law. Ultimately, they believe that visa denials indicate the state’s indifference to their status as citizens and it intentionally hinders their ability to live and thrive as a family in their own country. They also recognize that consequences of the reunification process will affect theirs and their children’s future for years to come.