Seminar Series : Status Exchange - Marriage to a U.S. Citizen (and Access to a Green Card)

About the Talk

For temporary immigrants, access to green card is an important key to success in the United States.  Some receive the green card through employment while others are sponsored by U.S. citizens through marriage.  In this paper, analyzing data of legal permanent resident immigrants (LPR) and their spouses from 2003 New Immigrant Survey, we attempt to understand how mate selection patterns between citizen/immigrant marriages and immigrant/immigrant marriages differ by gender of the citizen spouse and racial, educational, age, and skin color pairing.  We formulate hypotheses based on status exchange theories and make distinctions between whether the citizen spouse is male or female and whether the citizen spouse is U.S. born or naturalized.  Compared to educational pairing among immigrant couples, our results do not support the hypothesis that female U.S. citizens are more likely to marry male immigrants with better educational attainment than themselves.  Our results, on the other hand, support the hypothesis that U.S. citizen men are more likely to marry immigrant women much younger than themselves compared to age pairing of immigrant couples.  In addition, our results demonstrate a very strong level of marriages between men and women with identical skin color.

About the Speaker

Zhenchao Qian, PhD is Professor of Sociology and faculty associate in the Initiative in Population Research at the Ohio State University.  His research has concentrated in the area of family demography, race and ethnicity, and immigration.  In recent years, he and his collaborators published articles on changes in mate selection patterns for married and cohabiting unions, racial/ethnic diversity in marriage, family, and child wellbeing; and immigrants’ incorporation in American society.  His current research extends his previous work by examining outcomes in relation to educational, racial and ethnic, and nativity inequality.  His other research examines changes in racial identification among children born to interracial couples, premarital cohabitation and marital stability, and changes in family structure and wellbeing.

For more information go to Dr. Qian's home page.