

The insanely confusing path to legal immigration, in one chart - bhauer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/29/the-path-to-legal-immigration-in-one-insanely-confusing-chart/

======
bane
My wife is an immigrant. Her path to citizenship took about 8 years and an
extraordinary amount of time filling out paperwork, refilling it out,
submitting it, waiting months at a time while "something" happened with it (of
course with no way of status checking the progress of it). At the time, there
was almost no "instruction manual" you could use. You simply went to
www.ins.gov and started downloading PDF files and filling them out. You filled
out anything that seemed even remotely relevant because you didn't want to
show up missing something (more on that later).

Here's some of my recollection of it:

I remember spending many 5am mornings standing in a line outside the
immigration office with my wife, only for the daily quota of people allowed in
to max out and not be able to get in the building. More infuriating is that
people who made it in the previous day were given paperwork to let them jump
the line.

If you made it in, you simply stood in another line, so long that it wrapped
around the lobby, and then up into the emergency exit stairs, then wrapped
around the next floor then back into the stairs until you made it into the
waiting area -- this was usually around noon.

If you left the line for any reason (since 5am!) for food, bathroom, anything,
you lost your place.

Here you were met bruskly by a security guard who spoke rapid slang to all of
the immigrants and she spot checked the paperwork. If anything seemed
incorrect or they couldn't answer her questions (which even I had a hard time
understanding) they were kicked out of line). A second desk of immigration
officers then fielded complaints in the 20 or 30 languages of the people who
were kicked out after waiting 7 hours but it mostly served as a place the
officers could take a break and watch TV.

If you made it past that gauntlet you took a number and had to sit on the
floor since the waiting area had at least 2 times as many people in it as it
was designed to hold. Every 20 or 30 minutes a security guard would walk
around and force people to stand up yelling "no sitting on the floor!". But
after 7-8 hours of standing there weren't many people who followed that.

Most likely, after watching the call numbers for a few hours (and seeing only
one or two windows actually providing service), they'd shut down for the day
and you'd get a raincheck with a day to come back (where you could then jump
the morning line and get directly into the waiting room).

After returning on your raincheck, and waiting a few hours more, you finally
get up to a window, only to find out that either:

a) you brought the wrong, but incredibly similar, documentation (you filled
out the relative sponsorship rather than the spousal or some such)

b) you brought the correct documentation, but they no longer accept that
revision of the form. There is, in fact, an older version of the form that you
didn't fill out because you figured the newer one would be more correct, but
that's the only one they accept (and later when you return you find out that
either they've reverted back to the new form, or you didn't fill out the
addendum PDF you didn't know about that makes up for the gap in information
that the new form was supposed to remedy

c) they simply don't like how you filled it out, you could return on another
day, see a different immigration officer and have them accept the paperwork
right off the bat

d) some of the required documents simply don't exist in the immigrants country
of origin and they won't accept the equivalent (for example, my wife's native
country doesn't use birth certificates)

d) you did everything well enough for the person working the window that day
that they accept it. If you are lucky you are at the part of the process where
you get a verification serial number of some sort that you are supposed to be
able to use for them to look up your case for status checks etc.

Bear in mind that quite often the pile of papers you just gave the officer has
the only existing copy of some of the legal documents, many of which are
irreplaceable or extremely expensive and time consuming to replace. You are
supposed to get these back at some point. In the meantime these documents are
now unavailable for _anything_ else that might require them. In our case this
mean lost jobs and tens of thousands of dollars in lost wages.

The receiving officer unceremoniously dumps this precious cargo into a bin
with a huge mishmash of other odds and ends. It could be a trash can or it
could be the proper receiving bin, who knows? They assure you that by law
processing this step must take n-days.

At n+180 days you start to panic. Calls to the number they gave you result in
several hours of on hold time only to be told that they can't provide you with
a status update.

At n+270 days they call you back because of a problem with your documentation.
You go through the drill described above, usually taking one to two days of
waiting in line to be told that

a) they can't find your file so you'll have to redo all of the documentation
again (but those original one of a kind documents!). Don't worry, they assure
you, they'll turn up.

b) they couldn't verify the address for her sister or some such nonsense, who
of course has moved sometime in the previous 11 months, or god forbid a
relative drop dead and you have to figure out how to get a death certificate
into your file.

Either way, you'll have to spend yet another day or two standing in line.

Eventually...and this is back when they did work permits for green card
applicants...you'll get a flimsy hand glued id card for whatever it was you
were applying for. My wife had to go through the process 3 times on work
permits, each time with the INS missing their legal response date by months,
before finally getting called in for our green card interview.

Here, because up to this point you've received virtually no communication
whatsoever from immigration, you do what everybody does, pile various
artifacts from your life together, and memorize each other's toothbrush
colors, where you then go and wait in line, only now with a box of stuff
that'll have trouble making it through security, for a day or two. At the end
you find you that it's not actually the interview day, this is the day they
need you there to schedule the interview.

You return months later. In the meantime you get a letter that the medical
checkup has expired since the process is taking so long, and your wife needs
to go get another expensive checkup from one of two carefully selected doctors
that the INS uses. This results in a multi-week position on a waiting list,
only now you find out that your green card interview is happening _before_ the
doctor's appointment. In a blind panic you make dozens of phone calls trying
to sort this out to no avail - but it doesn't matter anyhow, because what
_nobody_ tells you is that it doesn't matter, after the interview you can just
submit the new checkup with an addendum form they won't tell you about. But
you find this out much later.

There's no appeals process too which makes all this fun, so when immigration
screws something up (they will) you have effectively no resort. You just hope
they don't fuck anything up too badly.

Finally, after waiting in line for another few hours, you make the interview,
where the officer looks at you and your wife says, "I believe you're married"
(so you didn't have to bring anything at all anyways, you've just been lugging
around 40 pounds of mementos for 4 days for no reason).

Now repeat the above nightmare for the citizenship application and you can see
why it's so hard to legally immigrate.

Oh, and suppose my wife's friend wants to immigrate, but has no current job
applying for her visa status and no relatives (she'll be the first generation
ever in the U.S.). How does she get in? She doesn't! There simply is no path
to immigration for this person. Sure she has a Ph.D. in Pharmacology or some
such, but immigrating here and _then_ looking for a job is simply not
possible.

 _edit_ this was in 2001, I've heard the process has been improved greatly
since then, our finally few visits for citizenship were smooth sailing in
comparison to our early experiences

~~~
lutorm
Wow. My experience getting a greencard two years ago was totally different. My
wife's a citizen, so she sponsored me. We sent in the chunk of paperwork, two
months later I got called in for fingerprinting, which involved waiting maybe
15 minutes after my appointment time. Then three months later we get called to
the interview, again after a short wait time we talk to the CIS person for
maybe 10 minutes, she looks at our financial info, a couple of wedding
pictures, and we're done. 3 weeks later greencard shows up in the mail. No
hassle about the type of documents Sweden provides (also no birth
certificate), no snags albeit slow.

Nice to know they've improved.

~~~
bane
I'm really really glad to hear it's improved tremendously. The piss poor
experience we had has colored my thinking of immigration reform since then.

Back when we did it it literally was easier to stay illegally.

------
jtreminio
I came to the country illegally with my mother, as she fled the effects of the
Nicaraguan civil war (Iran/Contra related), when I was 3 years old.

We jumped back and forth between Texas and Mexico 3 times. I like to say I'm 4
times illegal (Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, USA) and then kept doing it
afterward.

In the early 2000's we were granted amnesty as part of a larger Nicaraguan-
focused program. We'd been here for ~20 years. No way to proceed other than
living in the shadows.

Anything to help people better themselves, I'm all for it!

------
peelle
That chart isn't really that insane. There are many ways to legally immigrate,
and it just lumped most of them all together. Refugee status is missing. This
is just a Top Level Design Doc. Most people are gonna answer the first
question or two and then zoom in.

The process itself is tedious and can cost, but I think it is worth it. I went
through it helping my wife get her green card a few years ago.

I know many people who just didn't want to deal with the process and hired a
lawyer to do it for them.

------
peacemaker
I became a resident by following one of the simpler paths on this chart.
Coming to the country on vacation with my American wife, deciding to stay and
filing the I-485 (plus about $2000 in fees) and waiting for green card.

The whole process took about 5 months and included a visit to an office where
they take your fingerprints and ID, a separate visit to a designated doctors
to have a full medical and then a trip to a large city for an interview with
the immigration officer.

For the interview my wife any I were the only ones in the waiting room without
a lawyer or large binder full of supporting documents to prove our marriage.
We just had a 5 minute chat with the officer which went quite naturally and he
approved us right there. 7 days later a green card arrived in the post.

I tell my story to give a real example of immigrating here. I'm from one of
the US 'allies' countries, no bad history, good job etc. When I look back now
it didn't seem so bad but at the time there was a lot of stress and expense
and that's just for one of the 'easier' paths.

~~~
gavinlynch
I love to hear a story of successful American immigration. Thanks for sharing!

------
jack-r-abbit
I don't find that insanely confusing at all. The flow chart asks simple
questions like "Do you have a job opportunity?" and "Do you have a family
member in the US?" Sure the process might take a long time but many of those
steps can be navigated just by reading the questions and following the yes/no
paths to the next question. It looks complicated because of the many boxes in
succession but most of those boxes are just informational and could have been
combined into one single box of information. I don't know if the creators of
this flow chart had an agenda to make it look really complicated to push
reform or what.

~~~
TallGuyShort
If only providing the answers to these questions was as simple as reading
through the image and saying "yes" or "no". In actual fact, the process of
satisfying them of the answer and getting them to record that properly and
consistently for the next person is incredibly frustrating.

edit: I've been through it myself. "Insanely confusing" is spot-on accurate -
the process of answering each question on this graph is confusing in and of
itself.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
"The Really Hard Path" or "The Incredibly Long Path" sure... but not "The
Insanely Confusing Path", IMO.

~~~
kyro
What's your opinion based on?

~~~
jack-r-abbit
My opinion is based on that flow chart. It looks like it might be a bit time
consuming and contain difficult steps. but it does not look confusing. I am
not confused. In my opinion, it is not confusing... certainly not "insanely
confusing."

~~~
bane
Now navigate the flow chart without the flowchart, and without speaking a lick
of English. And then stretch the entire affair out over several years.

Good luck!

------
dougk16
If you're going the marriage route, it's not that bad. My wife and I did it
without a lawyer despite every source out there telling you that you're crazy
to do that (probably written by lawyers).

Don't get me wrong, the process is a horrible pain in the ass and needs vast
reforms, but it's not much more painful than a complex tax return. If you go
the lawyer route, I imagine it's pretty smooth sailing.

~~~
peacemaker
Not sure what happened by my comment below was supposed to be a direct reply
to this comment

------
Nux
I think unrestricted travel on the planet should be a basic human right. There
is something seriously wrong with someone telling another person he/she must
not move from a certain place.

~~~
dougk16
The thing that surprised me when I recently renewed my password was reading
some fine print that said you can't even legally leave the U.S without a
passport. Like I'm a prisoner here unless I have that piece of paper. I can
understand requiring a passport before getting on an international flight or
something, just as a practical matter, but the legal speak there somehow rubs
me wrong. Unless there's more fine print to amend that fine print.

~~~
lurker14
If you want to hop in a boat and motor away, no one will stop you. But if you
leave this country, you probably want to go into another country (the world is
about out of wilderness), and what are you going to do when you get there,
without a passport?

~~~
dougk16
But the fine print seems to say that they _would_ stop you in principle, that
is, if they knew about it and had enough resources to actually care. I'm not
saying that they would...it's the principle itself that rubs me the wrong way.

As a practical matter, I actually prefer that they check my passport before an
international flight, just as a last reminder. Certainly wouldn't want to fly
all the way to Japan thinking that I had my passport, then, whoops!

------
thetrb
I got a green card through the diversity visa program. The process itself
really wasn't that complicated. Sure, a lot of forms to fill out and the
overall process took about 1 year, but I never was at a point where simple
internet research didn't answer my questions.

------
Florin_Andrei
A combination of high demand + strong incentive to keep access at a strictly
controlled low level = this.

I made it all the way to the green square at the bottom, following a long path
along the left-hand edge. The process is a mind-boggling Rude Goldberg Machine
governed by arcane and seemingly arbitrary rules riddled with exceptions.
Having an excellent lawyer is both helpful (obviously) and depressing (in that
it reveals just how many hidden controls are embedded within).

The worst part is the long wait time when you have absolutely no say in the
outcome, basically at the mercy of a remote faceless bureaucracy that can
decide your fate and enforce it.

~~~
charonn0
>at the mercy of a remote faceless bureaucracy that can decide your fate and
enforce it.

Welcome to the American-style of governance. Please see the DMV for your
drivers license and then stop by the IRS to try your luck at the tax code. You
will need documentation for everything. The appeals process exists, but is
largely _pro forma._ If you comply successfully enough you might even get to
join a homeowners association one day.

------
Sukotto
The image looks like an uncredited reprint from this 2009 posting on
ImmigrationRoad [1] which has a large version one can actually read.

The pdf deeplinked to at the bottom is from this Reason blog post [2] (which
just adds some attribution, no extra info)

[1] [http://immigrationroad.com/blog/immigration-flowchart-a-
road...](http://immigrationroad.com/blog/immigration-flowchart-a-roadmap-to-
green-card/)

[2] [http://reason.com/blog/2008/09/24/new-at-reason-mike-
flynn-s...](http://reason.com/blog/2008/09/24/new-at-reason-mike-flynn-shikh)

------
foobar2k
This diagram misses out a ton of other immigration routes, including the O1
visa (aliens of extraordinary ability, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa>).

~~~
Cacti
This is better:

<http://reason.org/files/a87d1550853898a9b306ef458f116079.pdf>

------
manaskarekar
Direct link to the pdf - [http://immigrationroad.com/green-card/immigration-
flowchart-...](http://immigrationroad.com/green-card/immigration-flowchart-
roadmap-to-green-card.pdf)

------
bpolania
I like the charts but they doesn't seem to include the L-1 Visa path. Anyway
it seems to me that this new reform rewards illegal immigration and doesn't do
much to improve the chances of those applying for green cards through regular
channels.

Also the travel restrictions for those with L-1 visas need to be reviewed, it
doesn't makes sense that one you're approved with a L-1 visa in the US you
need to go through another approval process in your home country if you want
to travel outside the US.

~~~
otoburb
They attempt to address the L-1A & B visa path on the right side where they
ask "Working on H1, L1, etc".

Admittedly, the chart doesn't include the extra step of having to qualify for
an L-1. At least for the L-1A, you'd need to have worked for a subsidiary for
1 year before being granted the visa.

The good news is that once you have the L1, then you can follow the EB1 or EB2
paths on the far left hand side.

------
ComputerGuru
In some states, there is no point to legal immigration any more :)

Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn just signed a law (with Chicago Mayor Rahm
Emmanuel's backing) giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses and car
insurance.

~~~
jessaustin
I like driving on roads when other drivers have car insurance. It lowers my
rates, and in the event of an accident for which the other driver is liable I
get money to fix my car.

Surely we can come up with a less brain-dead way of encouraging immigrants to
participate in the legal process than intentionally making our own roads less
safe? Perhaps by making that process simpler, with more tangible benefit for
those taking part. The changes you cite are an example of that. This "War on
Immigration" crap is motivated by armament and prison suppliers.

------
JoeAltmaier
Shorter route: Enlist, serve. Citizen in what, 9 weeks?

------
criveros
What if I am a Canadian new grad student wanting to move to the US? I did not
see nothing about TN visas on that chart.

~~~
yarek
TN visa cannot be used to start the immigration process. You have to convert
to H1B or L1 visa, etc.

~~~
rll
Which isn't that bad. If your company is keen on having you stick around they
can do the TN1->H1B->Greencard juggle in under a year. Otherwise, just
sticking with your TN really isn't that different from being on a Greencard.
Yes, you have to renew it yearly and the immigration folks can be surly about
it, but you pay your $50 fee and you get another year. I did it for 10+ years
without issues.

~~~
mahyarm
Now it's every 3 years.

