Becoming Legal: Immigration Law and Mixed-Status Families

There are approximately eleven million undocumented people living in the United States, and most of them have family members who are U.S. citizens. There is a common perception that marriage to a U.S. citizen puts undocumented immigrants on a quick-and-easy path to U.S. citizenship. But for people who have entered the U.S. unlawfully and live here without papers, the line to legal status is neither short nor easy, even for those with spouses who are U.S. citizens.

Becoming Legal: Immigration Law and Mixed-Status Families follows mixed-status couples down the long and bumpy road of immigration processing. It explores how they navigate every step along the way, from the decision to undertake legalization, to the immigration interview in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to the effort to put together a case of "extreme hardship" so that the undocumented family member can return. Author Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz also discusses families' efforts to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of immigration processing--both for those who are successful and those who are not.


Author: Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 06/03/2016
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.40w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9780190276010
ISBN10: 0190276010
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | Hispanic American Studies
- Social Science | Sociology | Marriage & Family
- Social Science | Emigration & Immigration

About the Author

Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Loyola University Chicago. Her work has been published in American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, Human Organization, and other journals. She is the author of Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network (OUP, 2010).