Every time I hear someone saying “they should have come here the right way”, I want to punch them in the face. Since it is socially frown upon, I refrain myself, but I am still upset at the ignorance. I don’t mean it in a derogatory way, but most of the times, Americans have no idea what it takes to come here legally. So here is a short primer. Trust me, this long article simplify the process A LOT, and I do encourage you to read it and share with anyone who you think does not know.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, and this article is not meant to give any type of legal or immigration advice. It only contains my personal opinion.
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TL;DR
(if you are short in time or attention)
- Undocumented people that are refugees or asking for asylum are here legally, according to US Law
- Undocumented people that overstayed their visa are often not criminal, but they may be subjected to deportation. There are no criminal law that prohibit it. Immigration law is a civil matter
- Temporary Visa, Green Card (=residency permits) and citizen are NOT the same thing, and don’t easily flow from one to the other
- Qualifying for temporary visas is expensive and complicated
- Qualifying for a green card to live in the United States IS a challenge. The law strictly set out categories of people eligible for green cards, and in some categories, limits the number of green cards that can be given out each year.
- You need a crapload of money, and education to easily navigate the process, assuming you are eligible
Forget the “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The statue of Liberty message should be changed to : “give me your few, very wealthy and highly skilled people, and we MIGHT let them stay for a while, maybe
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First things first: immigrants who are in the country without documents because they are requesting asylum or are refugees, are NOT here illegally. They are following the correct procedure: “You may only file this application if you are physically present in the United States, and you are not a U.S. citizen.” (https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-and-asylum/asylum)
With this premise out of the way, I recognize that immigration has always been a thorny issue, but the new administration put it back in a brighter spotlight. To keep the promise of deporting millions of illegal immigrants, it does not differentiate between immigrants who committed a crime and the ones that are simply here illegally.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed as much: Asked by a reporter how many of the 3,500 immigrants arrested since Trump took office have criminal records, Leavitt said, “all of them because they illegally broke our nation’s laws.” (Axios, January 2025). However the law makes more distinctions. If a migrant crosses the border illegally, for instance, it can be a misdemeanor or a felony, but it is not automatic. Overstaying a visa is a different kind of violation, not a crime. You can read all about these violations in this article. And plenty of immigrants are in the US waiting for court dates or appointments, so completely legally.
In this article, however, I want to talk about LEGAL Immigration, because I am so tired of hearing: “they should have come here legally”. I immigrated to the United States LEGALLY more than 20 years ago, so I know what it means to come here “the right way” and how it is incredibly difficult and complicated.
LEGAL IMMIGRATION
Some clarification
Temporary residency, Permanent Residency (Green Card) and Citizenship are very different things. Ironically, getting the citizenship its the easiest of the the three, the only one I pursued without an attorney.
It is also important to understand that each of the following requires a high fluency in legalese, or a high amount of money to hire somebody who can help you fill out the forms. If you mess up filling out the multitude of documents, your application is denied and you have to start all over. Each application, of course, cost money.
UPDATE 3/23/2025: Legal visa holders have been turned away in major airport (or even detained for weeks at end). Apparently, expressing disagreement with the Trump’s Administration “conveyed hatred of Trump” and “could be qualified as terrorism.” Phones have been searched and used as an excuse for turning legal immigrants away or deport them. Learn what your rights are.
Temporary residency and Visas
There are many different visas available, including the Fiancee Visa that allows you to enter the country if you are marrying a citizen in the following 6 months. However, the three more common ones are the Student Visa (F1 and M1), and the work visa (H1B among others) . They each come with many restrictions.
- Student Visa (F1, M1) — a student must attend an approved school, full time (12 credit/semester or similar). They will pay out of state tuition even if they attend a State school (this often means paying hundred of dollars per credit). They are also required to purchase health insurance and demonstrate they have sufficient funds to live in the States. They are not allowed to work, except for on-campus, minimum wage jobs, and for not more than 20 hours per week. They also pay into social security and medicare with they paychecks.
- Skilled Work Visa (H1-B) — the number of these is limited, and constantly shrinking. It is meant for highly educated and skilled foreigners, and it is often used by Tech and Biotech companies to recruit brilliant minds. Technically it does not allow to pay these workers less, …technically. Also, the company must pay all related expenses AND demonstrate that Americans can’t do the job successfully. By the way, the work visa is attached to the employer, and expires if you lose your job.
You may think that once you have a visa, you also have a path to citizenship, or at the very least permanent residency…well, you would be wrong. Once your visa expires, for any reason, you are outta of here. If your visa was student visa, you may have up to 60 days to either leave or adjust your status. If you’re on an H-1B visa, you might get up to 10 days. You can apply for a visa extension or for a different visa category, and this process can keep you legally in the US while your application is being processed.
Permanent residency or Green Card
Remember, It does not matter how long you have lived in the USA, it does not matter if you have always been legal and never committed a crime, even a DMV violation, it does not matter if you contributed to social security and medicare even though you were not eligible for the benefits: either switch visa or leave.
“Qualifying for a green card to live in the United States IS a challenge. The law strictly set out categories of people eligible for green cards, and in some categories, limits the number of green cards that can be given out each year.”
These are some ways to get permanent residency:
- Investor Immigrant visa (EB-5) — To be eligible, you need to establish a new enterprise or increase an existing enterprise of a minimum of 40% in net worth, an initial investment of $800,000 -1,050,000 depending on where you create it (as of today) AND provide full-time positions for at least 10 qualifying employees. To read all the details, you can consult the USCIS page
- Immigrant Worker: At this point you are an alien (actual term used in immigration documents). For all categories, the employer must make sure that no other U.S. workers can fill the position by filling out the PERM application (Program Electronic Review Management); the company must sponsor them, fill out the paperwork and pay all (pretty high) expenses of the process. There are 3 categories:
a. first preference immigrant worker, meaning you: have extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business or athletics, or are an outstanding professor or researcher, or are a multinational manager or executive who meets certain criteria. This is how Melania got her Green Card, for her extraordinary ability as a model. In most cases, this is quite a long and complicated process
b. second preference immigrant worker, meaning you: are a member of the professions holding advanced degrees or who have exceptional ability (including requests for national interest waivers).
c. Third preference immigrant worker, meaning you are: a skilled worker, professionals, or other worker.
More categories:
- National Interest Waiver Immigrants, meaning your presence in the US is beneficial to the nation (such as a doctor in an underserved rural region)
- Military members and veterans: you may be eligible for naturalization and green car under certain conditions.
- Diversity Program: also called the Green Card Lottery (because this is exactly what it is). This is probably my favorite one. “The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (DV Program) makes up to 50,000 immigrant visas available annually, drawn from random selection among all entries to individuals who are from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.” Basically you are gambling for your future. Each country has a separate number of green cards allotted to them. It is a real program, because I know people who won it. However, in 10 years, I never got it.
- Special Categories: Asylum seekers, Human Trafficking victims, some religious workers, refugees, abuse victims and more. USICD show all the categories
- Family members: family members of a green card holder or a citizen. The wait list for this category is years long, for some decades, depending on the relationship. This is how Melania’s parents got their green card, and this is one of the categories that the current administration want to abolish.
- Green card via a spouse: this is probably the easiest (but still not easy) and cheaper way to gain residency…again NOT citizenship. You are allowed to come to the USA with a “fiancee Visa” as long as you marry an American citizen (or green card holder) within a specified time. The green card is not automatic, of course: that would be too easy. You have to fill out lots of paperwork, then you have to go to an interview with you spouse. In suspicious cases you are separated from the spouse and asked intimate questions about them. You have to bring documents, beside the Marriage Certificate, including photos, utilities bills, anything that prove you are really married and living together. In my case, I also had to demonstrate I was not HIV positive by going to a special doctor, who would send the results in a sealed envelope to immigration. Fortunately this requirement has been eliminated. After all this is processed (it can take months) you get a temporary document of residency, an “advanced Parole” (yes, it is really called this way) document to leave the country and come back, and a temporary work permit.
- Goes without saying that, if you can pay for a lawyer on top of the application fee, this can all be received in one day. So, once again, you need lots of money for your peace of mind.
- But this is not over: after getting your actually green card, you notice it expires in 2 years. At that point you could be called back for another interview, or you receive your permanent green card. Again, this is just residency, NOT citizenship. After a few years of marriage and permanent green card, you can then request citizenship.
NOTE: Apparently, this administration is trying to strip away civil and legal rights to green card holders, and remove their permanent residency, so my recommendation is twofold:
- If you can, apply for citizenship
- If you can’t, fly really low, don’t make waves, be careful with your social posts, do not go to public protests (they use face recognition now), and definitively do not organize one
What about citizenship?
Oh well, in comparison, that is a breeze, assuming, again, you can understand legalese and you have money to pay for the application. It is also the fastest process, at least it was for me.
- Fill out the form and pay the application fee
- You will receive a date for your Naturalization English test: this mean learning 100 questions about American history and government, that are provided to you in a convenient booklet. A test that most college students, by the way, would fail. I know: I tried the questions with my students
- The day of the test, you will be asked a few questions among the 100. In my case I got asked who were the American enemies in WW2, which I found funny, being Italian. When I told the officer that Italy was an enemy till the 8th of September 1943, but then we switched sides, he looked baffled because it was not in his book. They will also test if you know how to read, write and understand English (my question: “can you understand what I am saying?”)
- If all goes well, you will receive a date for the naturalization ceremony, where you will listen to the current president welcome you to America as a citizen (choose wisely. I picked 2012 to hear the message from Obama) and you will be given a tiny American flag to swear allegiance to the Flag.
- You will pick up you naturalization certificate (make copies of it) and if you want to you can change your social security card there.
Easy peasy, but what what a relief!
So again, stop saying: “they should have come the right way”. There is NO EASY way to come here legally, especially if you are poor, don’t speak the language, and are not a white European. And once you are here, there is NO EASY way to stay here legally.
We need to reform LEGAL immigration to make it easier to come here legally. Start advocating for this. Some ideas:
- Offer a path to residency, after you have lived in the country for a specific amount of years, especially if you have been here legally the whole time.
- Eliminate the stupid Green Card lottery, and actually make it easier for people that NEED to be here safely, so they can come here legally. That would be an extra 50,000 green cards
- Provide an easier way to gain temporary residency, that can be transformed on permanent residency
It took me 10 years, and switching visas 9 different times to finally have access to the temporary green card, and only because I got married to my husband (going strong for more than 20 years, so a legit marriage). And I am one of the LUCKY ones, because my parents helped me and supported my American dream and they had the means to do it.
How many others are like me? Very few, and mostly not the one that are more vulnerable and they are most desperately in need.
Forget the “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This should be changed to : “give me your few, very wealthy and highly skilled people, and we MIGHT let them stay for a while, maybe”
Now, when someone tells me: “they deserve to be kicked out” I tell them, “well, enjoy your $10 tomato and $15 basket of strawberries” (because we all know who is picking produce, right?)
