10 Ways To Get Your Green Card In The United States 2024

The United States immigration rules were intended to offer newcomers a variety of options for obtaining a Green Card.

Which road to a Green Card you should follow depends on your qualifying category.

10 Ways To Get Your Green Card In The United States

Obtaining a Green Card through Employment

It does not just relate to your company, this Green Card category is rather wide.

Green Card possibilities can also be obtained by investments or having a specialized profession.

• Permanent Positions

If you have a job offer for permanent employment in the United States, your company might be a part of your Green Card petition.

The first step is for your employer to get a labor certification from the United States Department of State and to complete USCIS Form I-140 Immigrant Petition for an Alien Worker.

Get In By Marrying Your Way In

A foreign citizen must be sponsored by an immediate relative who is at least 21 years old and is either a U.S. citizen or a U.S. lawful permanent resident to be eligible for a green card in this manner.

Marriage is a frequent way to accomplish this, but the marriage must be real and not only for immigration purposes. There are two sorts of family-based immigrant visas, to talk more broadly about this manner of immigrating:

• Preferences of the family

These visas are for particular, longer-distance familial ties with a US citizen, as well as certain defined relationships with a lawful permanent resident.

Processing takes a long time, maybe years or decades. The number of immigrants in these categories is regulated each fiscal year.

• Close Relatives

The number of immigrants in these categories is not restricted each fiscal year. These visas need a close familial relationship with a U.S. citizen, such as a spouse, child, or parent.

Processing is completed quickly, generally lasting approximately a year.

Green Card by way of family

If you have a close family who is a U.S. citizen or has a Green Card, they can petition for you to be granted lawful permanent residency in the United States.

This is the quickest and most common method of obtaining a Green Card. Citizens of the United States are allowed to petition for immediate relatives, such as:

• Spouses
• Parents of U.S. citizens over the age of 21
• Unmarried children under the age of 21

Put Money Into It

Currently, the EB-5 direct investor program allows investor immigrants to get green cards by investing as little as $500,000 in their enterprises and creating 10 new employment.

This is a transitory opportunity that will most likely close before the end of the year, with the necessary sum expected to rise to $ 900,000 as it did previously. This program’s regional center variant is presently closed and pending reopening by Congress.

Being a Refugee or a Refugee Asylee

Immigrants who arrive in the United States as refugees or asylees can apply for a Green Card one year after arriving. This also applies to asylees’ close family members.

Make Your Way Inside

Consider Toyota sending its Tokyo manager to run the company’s New York office. That’s a perfect example of an inter-corporate move that might lead to a green card. Your petitioning employer must be based in the United States and intend to hire you as a manager or executive.

The petitioner must have been in existence in the United States as a legal business for at least one year and have a qualifying relationship with the entity that recruited you in a management or executive role overseas. Because no work certification is necessary, this is a very attractive option for obtaining a green card.

Work Your Way Into It

Either apply for an H1B work visa and subsequently, labor certification to obtain a green card, like in the student case, or apply for an EB-2 exceptional worker green card based on a national interest waiver. If their employer applies for labor certification and sponsors them for a green card, H-1B applicants who perform services in a specialty occupation, and ability related to a Department of Defense cooperative research and development project, or services as a fashion model of distinguished merit or ability can obtain green cards.

Again, this is a long process that begins with a lottery in most H1B cases and is capped at a certain number of people each year. However, there is no numerical restriction if the employment is connected to a college, a nonprofit affiliated with a college, a nonprofit, or an organization that needs the H-1B employee to work at one of these first three types of businesses. However, the H1B visa path is the least preferred option to obtain a green card.

An EB-2 application has the benefit of allowing you to apply for a green card without having to wait for a job offer.

You must also meet the national interest waiver criteria, which include demonstrating that the proposed endeavor has both substantial merit and national importance, that you are well-positioned to advance the proposed endeavor, and that it would be beneficial to the United States to waive the normal requirements of a job offer, namely, a labor certification.

Educate Yourself

Optional Practical Training, a one-year post-graduate employment visa, will be available to you. Obtain a student visa to study at a university in the United States for a bachelor’s or master’s degree.

After a year, request that your boss submit an H1B work visa on your behalf. Then encourage the boss to file a labor certification with the Department of Labor saying that no American workers are ready, willing, or able to take the job.

Then, through the US Citizenship and Immigration Service of the Department of Homeland Security, apply for a green card. This is a lengthy and twisting route full of pain, but for many candidates, especially those with talents but little money to invest and no relatives in the United States, it may be their only choice.

Get In Through the Back Door

Apply for a green card through the annual Diversity Green Card Lottery, which chooses 55,000 individuals to immigrate to the US each year.

These are candidates from countries that are underrepresented in terms of immigration to the United States, such as Fiji, Estonia, or Ukraine. Regardless, the applicant’s closest family members are also granted green cards.

Any choice picked should be further investigated to nail down all of the specifics involved, as the descriptions above are extremely generic.

Work Your Way In

Individuals who have received globally renowned honors such as the Oscar, Grammy, or Pulitzer Prize, or who have reached the pinnacle of their profession or vocation are generally included.

Follow in the footsteps of international success stories such as Drake and Ryan Renolds, who have received green cards as a consequence of their achievements. In general, applicants with exceptional talents are celebrities in their areas.