Foreign nationals who marry U.S. citizens have an expedited track to naturalization. U.S. immigration officials require that "green card" petitioning couples demonstrate that their relationships are "valid and subsisting" (i.e., for love) and not fraudulent (i.e., for immigration papers). These requirements are ostensibly gender and racially neutral, but migration itself is not; men and women petitioners seek partners in different regions and solicit advice from similar others about the potential obstacles to their petitions' success. Using an online ethnography and textual analysis of conversation threads on a large online immigration forum where U.S. petitioners exchange such information, i examine how gendered standards of legitimacy are applied to family and sexuality and used discursively among petitioners to achieve genuineness and define red flags indicating potential marriage fraud. i argue that forum members police immigration requests even before cases reach an immigration officer. Petitioners use the formal criteria of U.S. immigration in ways that reveal gender ideologies, expectations for conformity to a gendered hegemonic family ideal, and sexual double standards surrounding sexual agency, fertility, and desirability. These intersectional norms shape members' online discussions about the suitability of marriages and of the migration of noncitizen partners to the United States. AuThOR'S NOTE: This publication was only possible thanks to the large amounts of invisible intellectual and emotional labor of others. Thank you to Myra Marx Ferree and Pamela oliver for reading countless drafts and guiding me through this process. i am thankful to the editor, Jo reger, and deputy editor, Krista Brumley, for their availability and encouragement and to the anonymous reviewers, particularly reviewer C/e, for their careful, thought-provoking feedback. i owe the deepest debt of gratitude to the Feminista Pentagon Group: Katie Zaman, Maria azocar, Di Wang, and Madeline Pape for their emotional and intellectual support. Thanks to nancy naples, Jenna noble, Jason Turowetz, Mehmet Gurses, and the FemSem participants for their feedback and comments, and to alex Hanna for her technical know-how. Finally, i am indebted to Faisal el anzaoui, arlene Longo, and Carrie Hough for their love and support.

I argue that scholars study the Internet as a social institution. This study employs a critical literature review of multi-disciplinary scholarship on the Internet, the family, and adjacent institutions comparing it to Patricia Yancy Martin's (2005) fourteen criteria of social institution to demonstrate how the Internet represents a new social institution, worthy of inquiry through its fourteen defining characteristics of endurance (persistence over time), social practices, conflicts, power struggles, identity formation, and change, among other criteria (Martin 2004; 1256). I, then, I discuss the potential starting points of digital data research methods for newcomers to the field, such as data acquisition, coding potential, and approaches to analysis. Conceptualizing the Internet as a social institution will ultimately improve the evaluation of peer-reviewed digital research, expand social theory more broadly, elevate our awareness of the Internet's sociality, and subject the interconnections of the social institution of the Internet and other social institutions to more critical investigations.

I argue that scholars study the Internet as a social institution. This study employs a critical literature review of multi-disciplinary scholarship on the Internet, the family, and adjacent institutions comparing it to Patricia Yancy Martin’s (2005) fourteen criteria of social institution to demonstrate how the Internet represents a new social institution, worthy of inquiry through its fourteen defining characteristics of endurance (persistence over time), social practices, conflicts, power struggles, identity formation, and change, among other criteria (Martin 2004; 1256). I, then, I discuss the potential starting points of digital data research methods for newcomers to the field, such as data acquisition, coding potential, and approaches to analysis.Conceptualizing the Internet as a social institution will ultimately improve the evaluation of peer-reviewed digital research, expand social theory more broadly, elevate our awareness of the Internet’s sociality, and subject the interconnections of the social institution of the Internet and other social institutions to more critical investigations.

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This study investigates how U.S. citizens petitioning for “green cards” on behalf of foreign national spouses uphold the U.S. racial project as they navigate the spousal reunification process. It also explores the role of online communities as crucial “brokers” and mediators between citizen, noncitizen, and the state. This work troubles the dichotomy between immigration officers/couples while giving primacy to the citizen-spouse’s voices. Using content analysis of an online forum where petitioners exchange advice with similar others, I show the citizen’s complicity with the racialized hierarchical order of the American nation. Ultimately, family migration policies and regulations are exercises in state-building, and nation-building, and citizens partake in it while trying to secure their own family, disciplining themselves to align with the state’s ideal of what a proper future nation should look like.