Who Arrived First? The Timing of Arrival among Young Immigrant Wives and Husbands

The strongest predictor of immigrants’ adaptation to the American context is the length of time that they have lived in the United States. Scholars often assume, however, that immediate members of foreign-born families, especially husbands and wives and their foreign-born children, all arrive in the US at the same time and thus have lived there for the same length of time. Using the 2000 US census data, we investigate this assumption and analyse the sequence of migration among young married immigrant husbands and wives. Results show that over a half of married foreign-born men and women had arrived in the US in different years and that the sequence is gendered, with men more often arriving before the women. These patterns differ by country of origin. In general, the earlier arrival is older, and more likely to be employed than the later arrival, whether the earlier arrival is the husband or the wife.