Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration

That's true PlasmaGryphon, I have a friend from Canada who went through the process and because she was incorrectly advised by a lawyer, it took her 6+ years to get the whole thing cleared up and to actually get her citizenship. This despite being the mother of a child born as an American citizen and being married to a member of the armed forces. I can't believe what a nightmare it was and I don't think most people have any idea.

If it was more common knowledge, people would probably demand the process be simplified.

Mrs. Gryphon came from Canada too, although starting the process in the late '00s, which has changed a lot from the 90s onward. On advice of a lawyer, we were married before starting the paperwork, and still took almost a year to get a green card, cost thousands of dollars in fees (plus the cost of the lawyer), and took years to remove conditionals on permanent residence status. There is a lot of arbitrariness to it when it is a spouse being brought in as you're judge on how legitimate your relationship is. And later, we found out the hard way, there is enough flexibility in how things are interpreted that her citizenship got denied in what was a pretty straightforward application (sorry, can't give more details). This means more lawyers and fees to maintain PR status now that I have a job in Canada. So we might just let the PR status lapse, which would start the citizenship process over again upon moving back to the US.

I don't know how many people could manage without money and legalese-sense. And judging from how family and friends have reacted throughout the process, a lot of people have no idea what immigration to the US involves these days ("Oh, she's your wife, you can just simply...")

Of course she does, as 1/10000 of a dot. According to the info at the site, Canada was the #2 source of U.S. immigrants in 1963.