Chain migration refers to the mechanism by which foreign nationals are allowed to immigrate by virtue of the ability of previous immigrants to send for their adult relatives.
In the United States, chain migration is one of many reasons that legal immigration has quadrupled from levels during the 1960s. As such, it is one of the primary causes of the United States' current record-breaking immigrant population boom.
Initially, chain migration was about keeping a nuclear family together. Until the late 1950s, America's chain migration policies included only spouses and minor children of immigrants. A nuclear family (sometimes known in the British sociological term, cornflake family) is a household consisting of two married, heterosexual parents and their legal children (siblings), as distinct from the extended family. ...
However, ever since the late 1950's, chain migration policies of the United States have included the ability for immigrants to not only send for their children and spouses, but also for their parents and adult children of their parents. Those parents and adult children, in turn, can send for their children, their parents, and adult children of their parents.
Naturally, chainmigration drives immigration numbers up; annual immigration has tripled since chainmigration began in the mid-1960s and has led to additional millions consigned to visa waiting lists.
Chainmigration happens because present U.S. immigration policy is based on the principle of broadly defined family reunification; immigrants are able to sponsor their relatives back home to be admitted as immigrants here.
Because of chainmigration, over three million aliens have been told they are eligible to immigrate but have to wait.
The gender element in the migration phenomena is related to the motivation of men and women to move, to the migration process itself and to the conditions migrants find on their arrival to the country of destination.
Migration is also seen by women mainly as a strategy which would allow them to offer better living conditions to their families, whether in the country of origin or destination..
Migration seems to have a generally empowering impact on women themselves in terms of higher self-esteem and increased economic independence both as family members and as economic actors.
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