Immigrant Visas

While you are permitted to leave the United States as a lawful permanent resident or green card holder, you are still subject to certain restrictions. Too much travel can disrupt your ability to show continuous residence in the United States, which can threaten your green card status and jeopardize your ability to seek citizenship later.…

Founding a start-up in the United States can be a path to lawful permanent residency or even citizenship. For many, getting started will be little more than a matter of choosing the right visa or program and then following the steps to meet certain requirements. Not all of these pathways require you to have a…

Many of the ways you can go about getting citizenship are tedious, difficult to go through, and uncertain.  It may come as no surprise that literally buying your way into United States permanent residency, and eventual citizenship, is one of the easiest ways to get the job done.  The EB-5 is the immigrant investment visa.…

The United States does offer a pathway by which a US citizen can file a petition to bring a sibling to the United States as a permanent resident. Siblings are “Fourth Preference” family class immigrants which does mean they could wait a long time before they are allowed to enter the United States or receive…

If you have a valuable employee that you’d like to keep around indefinitely then you can sponsor them for a green card by going through a specific application process. You can only do this for EB visa holders or dual-intent temporary work visa holders like the H1-B, the L-1, and the O-1 work visas. Here’s…

The Diversity Visa was established in 1990 to increase the number of immigrants from nations who have not, historically, sent as many people to the United States.  How many diversity visas are there? The US government issues roughly 50,000 diversity visas every year.  Who is eligible for a diversity visa? Prospective immigrants from countries who…

On July 26, 2021, US Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California introduced H.R. 4681, also known as the Let Immigrants Kickstart Employment (LIKE) Act. The bill rewards immigrants who want to establish and develop venture-capital backed start-up companies in the United States in the hopes that this will lead to economic growth and create jobs for…

You might be surprised to learn that marriage fraud is big business. For example, in 2020 a California resident by the name of Chang Yu “Andy” He was arrested for coordinating sham marriages between Chinese nationals and U.S. citizens in exchange for cash. How much cash? $10,000 up front, then $25,000 when the Chinese national…

Here in Pennsylvania medical marijuana is legal at the state level, even though recreational use remains illegal. It is easy to find medical marijuana dispensaries. This reality has led many immigrants who live and work here in the state of confusion and has even gotten them into trouble. After all, it’s hard to imagine the…

A work visa can absolutely be a valid path to a green card. Yet it is not an easy path. Supplies of employment-based green cards are limited. Only 140,000 of these visas are available every year. This may mean years of waiting, which means developing a relationship with an employer-sponsor who will continue to look…