American Immigration is Fun
On occasion I am asked what it takes to move to the United States if you are not a US citizen. Coincidentally, I was recently pointed to a 2008 issue of The Reason, which has a flow chart illustrating just how complicated legal immigration to the US is:
(click the image for a full-size PDF version)
Now, the flow chart somewhat presumptuously implies that every immigrant to any country wants to become a citizen of that very country, which I have found to be untrue — some of my family’s best friends have lived in Germany for decades and have no intention to give up the citizenship they were born with. But the chart still gives a helpful overview of just how hard it is to indeed go down that road if you wanted to. What might surprise some people is that US immigration law is among the strictest in the western world — somewhat ironic, given its traditional status as an immigrant country.
Another thing that has caused confusion before: Just because you marry a US citizen, you don’t automatically earn a residence permit (let alone citizenship) without any further ado. It makes it easier to achieve both of these things, but a US citizen’s spouse still has to file a bunch of paperwork (and bring time and patience) to receive the necessary papers to enter the country.
Thanks for the link, Jabba!
One thing not listed in the diagram is that it is faster to receive a green card if someone is already, legally, in the country (6-12 months) instead of outside the country (2-3 years). Pim’s green card took 18 months because they lost her digitally scanned fingerprints, 5 separate times.
They’ve tried to make this easier by issuing temp marriage visas, but these only last 2 months. If your temp status expires while waiting for the green card, a certainty, you must leave the country. Being an illegal alien at any point means you have a 7 year wait before you can apply again.
Pim was only allowed to stay in the country because she took classes, she didn’t need, just to maintain her student visa. The last semester she didn’t even attend them because she was 7 months pregnant with Preston. We were 6 months from her visa expiring and faced with Preston and her spending his first 1-2 years in thailand.
Through all of this the immigration dept. was no help. They couldn’t tell us anything over the phone other than “your application is pending”, and made us wait 4 months to see someone in person.
It’s terrifying that your family might be split up for years. The biggest problem I see is that most of the country will never experience this. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so hard to fix the system.