How hard is it to emigrate to the US?

Pretty hard. http://bit.ly/ay10GS

@robmandu Eek! That actually is true isn’t it – looking at the official visa site. Then how am I watching programs like ‘Undercover Boss USA’ and seeing guys from Eastern Europe working at 7/11 stores? They’re not skilled workers and have no family in the US – so how do they get in? (I’m not saying they shouldn’t be there btw – just asking how they got there)

makes me wonder too, I had to put up $75000 bond and took a year to get it back- and the paperwork is unbelievably time consuming, and expensive, and the travel to the consulate..on and on—yes its hard

My husband and brother-in-law both came here as immigrants. It was damned hard, particularly for my BIL and that was before 9/11.

If you have a skill a company in America needs, they take care of the paperwork for the most part, but it would be for a working VISA. Once here other options could open up.

Emigrate and work visa are two different things.

@ChazMaz I k ow, that is why I wrote it would be for a work visa. My husband came here on a student visa, then stayed on a work visa, then we were married and got his green card, and eventually became a citizen. Of course it does not always work out like that. I know people who have come on working visa’s and then got laid off, and wound up having to leave the country.

Also, I think some of it depends on what country you are coming from. I think it continues to be easier from certain places to come to America. My husband’s sister used to complain about how they scrutinized her more, and had more requirements than her husband. He was Italian, she was Mexican. In fact a neighbor of mine advised a Venezuelan friend of mine to regain their Italian citizenship (parents were Italian) to be able to get papers here in the US.

WARNING This reply contains sarcasm…

Well… It really depends on what country you are from. If you are from China or India you need to get an H1B work visa so you can take a technology job away from an American citizen while working for roughly the same wages as a bus boy, then you can marry somebody who already has citizenship to seal the deal.

If you are from Mexico all you have to do is walk across the border and wait for the next round of amnesty, and if anyone dares question whether you are in the country illegally all you have to do is scream racism.

^ WORD.

Don’t you just love double standards.

Thanks @YoBob for saving me the trouble of making this point myself.

About China, can they get asylum here? Like the Cubans? And how the Russians used to. Do the Chinese just have to make it here and we let them in, because they are communist?

Not that it is hard. It is just time consuming and quite expensive. I am currently in the us on a student visa on its way to becoming a greencard.

Therefore, you asking if it is hard…. well no, it is not hard. What it is tho, is time consuming and expensive. Time consuming because after your paper work is in, its all up to the people revising your case and it could take them a month or could take them 4 years, who knows, but you have no control over that whatsoever, also expensive, depending on what you are looking to get what type of visa or what not, but they all come with pretty high chargers, that could end up adding to a lot. As long as you do your paper work, and send it in, thats all that is really in your hands to work with. other then that well its up to america!