A United States citizen can petition a spouse, parent, or child for an immigrant visa which will entitle them to apply for a green card. If a U.S. citizen is petitioning for a parent the U.S. citizen child must be 21 years or older. Also, if you are a U.S. citizen sponsoring a child, you will have to specify whether the child is younger or older than 21 and if the child is either married or unmarried. As a Legal Permanent Resident (if you have a green card yourself), you can only petition a spouse, child, or unmarried son or daughter.

A visa petition is subject to what is called a “priority date” which determines how long it will take for a visa to become available after a petition is filed. A “priority date” is determined by what type of relative you are petitioning for and what country they are from. For example, a spouse would be considered an immediate relative of a U.S. citizen and considered “first preference”. These priority dates are available on the U.S. State Department web site and are updated monthly

The foreign national that you are petitioning for must first have an available visa before he or she can apply for a green card.

Please be aware that if you are a U.S. citizen and married a foreign national who came into the country legally (through a valid visa), it is possible for you to file an immigrant petition on your spouse’s behalf and for your spouse to simultaneously apply for a green card while still in the United States.

Contact Arcala & Zwerin

You may also be eligible for an immigrant visa if you are going to be employed in the United States. Like family immigrant visas, employment immigrant visas are divided into categories depending on the job you will be performing and your credentials. The visa category and the country where you were born will determine when a visa will be available. Please refer to the visa bulletin on the U.S. State Department website.

The first employment preference is for foreign nationals with extraordinary ability in the areas of business, science, the arts, and athletics who have gained professional notoriety and sustained international acclaim. This category is also available for multinational executives and managers.

The second preference category is for those who are professionals who hold advanced degree or the equivalent of an advanced degree. This category is also for those foreign nationals of extraordinary abilities whose work will benefit the national interest of the United States.

The third preference category is reserved for professional, skilled, and other workers. A professional worker is someone who fills a job in which at least a bachelor degree is required. A skilled worker is someone who fills a job in which at least two years of experience is required. This visa category is also available for those who have no degree and less than two years experience.

The third preference visa is typically used for nurses who want to work in the United States who are not coming from Canada. This is because nurses in the United States do not always require advanced degrees but are skilled workers. If you are a nurse who is a Canadian national, you may enter the United States under NAFTA. A Canadian nurse can come to the United States to work with a TN visa as part of NAFTA.

Contact Arcala & Zwerin

You can acquire your green card if you are willing to invest in the United States and create jobs. Here, you must be willing and able to invest 1 million dollars or more to start a new enterprise in the United States and the new enterprise must be able to create at least 10 new jobs. These jobs must be filled by U.S. citizen or legal permanent residents. In this case, you may be eligible for what is called an EB-5 visa. It may also be possible to invest only $500,000 if you are starting the new enterprise in an area designated as a “regional center”. These are mostly rural areas of about 20,000 people or less that have relatively high unemployment. Here is a link to regional centers throughout the U.S.