Legally Immigrating To The U.S. Is Not As Easy As You Think. It’s Practically Impossible.
“Why don’t they just come legally or apply for a Green Card!?”
“I don’t have a problem with them coming to the US as long as they come in legally.”
“They deserve to be put in jail because they are breaking the law by coming illegally.”
“My grandparents came here legally so why can’t they do the same?”
These are comments that I hear often from U.S. born citizens when it comes to immigration.
Based on my experience with the U.S. immigration system, I feel compelled to respond to American citizens who’ve never had to concern themselves with U.S. immigration law.
If you’ve ever been mad that people are coming to the U.S. illegally, it is my hope that this post will help you understand why this happens.
The short answer is this:
There are only FOUR categories of legal immigration if you don’t have direct family ties or you’re not marrying a U.S. citizen.
- H Visas // Temporary work visas for professionals (H-1B visa), agricultural or seasonal workers (H-2A and H-2B visas), and trainees (H-3B visa).
Examples include: specialized tech workers (H-1B), orchard workers, ski instructors (H-2A & H-2B) and research professionals (H-3B)
2. E Visas Treaty traders (E-1 visa), treaty investors (E-2 visa), Australian business professionals (E-3 visa) and immigrant investors (EB-5 visa).
Examples include: residents of foreign countries with substantial trade with the U.S. (E-1), operations personnel who have invested and will be running the operations (E-2), residents of Australia with a job offer to perform in a speciality occupation (E-3) and investors looking to invest $1,000,000 in a city, or $500,000 in rural areas (E-5)
3. L Visas For intra-company transfers of foreign executives, managers, or employees with specialized knowledge.
Examples include: managers and directors from multinational companies coming to expand and run their business services in the U.S.
4. O Visas For foreign nationals with extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics.
Example include: actors, producers, directors, athletes, models, musicians, artists, doctors and professors.
- If you are on a student visa, it is not transferable to permanent residency and it must be converted to one of the above if you want to remain in the U.S as a lawful permanent resident.
- If you’re seeking immigration through political asylum, you have to prove that returning to your birth country will put your life in physical danger.
- If you enter the Green Card diversity lottery program, your chances of getting picked are based on luck and the country you come from. The nature of this diversity lottery is to enable people from under represented countries to come to the US.
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Most unskilled workers who are accused of crossing the border illegally would fall under the H-2A and H-2B visa categories (agricultural or seasonal workers). However, these visas only allow you to stay for up to 3 years maximum. To change your status from a temporary worker to permanent employment is a lengthy process involving attorneys.
All of the visa categories require money upfront and for the H categories, they are subject to changing annual caps. Once the cap is reached, no more visas for that category will be given out for that year. You will have to wait for the following year when the window of application opens and the cap has not been reached in order to file your application.
If your application goes through, the employer, with the help of lawyers, have to present a case to USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) demonstrating that there are not sufficient U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and/or available to do the temporary work.
I immigrated to the U.S. through the H1-B visa for skilled workers. It was a long, arduous and expensive process. If you have a foreign degree, it must be equivalent to a U.S. four year degree. Your university transcripts and grades will be sent to at least 5 universities in the U.S. to be independently verified by university professors.
The first payment I made was $5,000 upfront in full to my lawyer (in 2002) so they could file the application on my behalf with a U.S. employer as a sponsor. This fee is non-refundable, regardless of the outcome.
You must hold this visa for 6 years before you become eligible to apply for a Green Card.
During these 6 years if you travel outside of the U.S. you must pay $660 a year to renew the paperwork called Advance Parole that allows you to travel on the visa.
After 6 years on the H1-B visa, you are then eligible to apply for a Green Card. The cost of applying for a Green Card is at least $5,000. If you are between 14–78 years old, the form and biometrics fee alone costs $1,225. This is before the lawyer’s hourly cost to fill out and file all the paperwork on your behalf.
After you hold a Green Card for 5 years, you are then eligible to apply for citizenship, again costing hundreds to thousands of dollars in legal fees and application costs.
Throughout the process of the visa applications, the change of status from H1-B to Green Card, and eventually citizenship (if you get this far), you are subjected to mandatory rigorous background checks through the FBI, police database and biometrics. Biometrics is a process used to identify individuals in groups that are under surveillance. If you fail any of these checks during this process, your application will be denied.
People are not coming into this country willy nilly by the bus and boat load and stealing American jobs like the Trump administration and his fans claim. There is a strict and due process that is incredibly thorough and demanding.
As you can see, this process is not cheap, fast or easy.
I was extremely fortunate to meet an employer who needed my specific skillset to help him run and grow his online business. He was also willing to sponsor me for a visa. I was also fortunate to have the money to pay for the immigration process at the beginning stages. He was a small business owner and I did not want to burden him with thousands of dollars in legal fees.
In total, I probably spent around $25,000 for the entire process including domestic and foreign trips out of the country to get my passport stamped. This was necessary as my status adjusted from one stage to another and a different stamp is given to my passport each time I leave and enter the country.
Part of the inspiration for creating my own business was to provide jobs to people from the country who so graciously accepted me. While the immigration process itself was difficult, the American people I’ve encountered along the way in the last 16 years have been nothing but welcoming.
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So yes, there are LEGAL ways to immigrate to the U.S. but the odds are stacked against you every step of the way. Unless of course you have the money, resources and connections to begin with.
The two biggest hurdles when trying to immigrate to the U.S. on the H visas (skilled and unskilled workers) are:
- Finding an employer who will sponsor and hire you before you enter the country with the necessary paperwork.
2. Having enough money to pay for the application process.
As a side note, if you enter the country illegally, you have no way of obtaining ANY kind of legal process to become a citizen at any point now, or in the future, even if you marry a US citizen.
Think of those people who are crossing the border “illegally”. Are they people who are flush with cash, have a cushy job lined up, and ready to hire a U.S. lawyer and pay them $200 to $400 per hour to process their hundreds of pages of paperwork? Or are they folks looking for a minimum wage job in the service industry, ready to work their ass off to provide for their family?
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This is why the immigration system is broken. People come to the U.S. illegally because there is no reasonable or affordable process for them to come legally.
At the end of the day, people who come to the U.S. want what we all want: a better life and security for their family.
Here’s the thing that I find ironic.
Most U.S. citizen’s grandparents or great grandparents immigrated to the U.S. by literally hopping on a boat from Europe or by way of Canada. A lot of them were processed through Ellis Island, some even changed their names and they became proud Americans. That’s about it because America (then) was wide open to all who wanted to come and make it their home.
If the immigration process was as difficult and expensive back then as it is now, there would be a lot less people in the U.S. and most of the people who complain about “illegals” would still be living in Europe.
Ask yourself which of the four categories above do your grandparents or great grandparents qualify for when it comes to legal immigration to the US?
The only people who are native to this country are Native Americans.
If you are not Native American, have slave roots, or came as a refugee, then you are an immigrant. Period.
The next time you think about people coming across the border illegally, I urge you to think about the process I’ve outlined and it is my hope that you can find some compassion for those who are coming to the U.S. to seek a better life and better opportunities, just like your grandparents or their parents did.
Dreams Are Universal. Opportunity is Not.
~Kiva.org
Disclosure: I am not an attorney. This article was written based on my personal experience as a legal immigrant and the process I went through. There might be legal discrepancies and I welcome corrections and comments.
