Even if you have an employer willing to sponsor your green card application, the preliminary paperwork can take over a year before you're officially in the green card pipeline. How long you have to wait depends on your country of origin. Canadians can expect to wait at least two years, Indians and Chinese five years or more. But the kicker is that if you lose your job or change companies while you're in the pipeline, the whole process restarts! (Unless you're in the final stage, but that's comparatively short compared to the whole process.) That is, if you can find a new job. If you can't, you have to leave the US.

The US is unique among western countries in not have a way for skilled immigrants to get into the country unless they first have a sponsor. The US work visa program effectively creates a class of indentured laborers as their continued residency in the US is entirely dependent on their employers.

Now, how that relates to startups and whether your own corporation can sponsor you - I honestly do not know.

1. You cannot apply for a green card on TN visa 2. It has to be renewed annually, and you have to demonstrate continued strong ties to Canada (bank accounts, family, etc.), so US immigration would no doubt get suspicious if you kept renewing

Actually, you can:

http://www.naftatnlawyer.com/applying-for-green-card-tn-st/

> It has to be renewed annually

There's a 3 year TN now:

http://www.naftatnlawyer.com/nafta-tn-blog/2008/10/16/three-...

If you're Canadian, I suggest subscribing to the Grasmick.com newsletter and poking around the site. Lots of good info there.

Not sure if the newsletter is up to date but I noticed that the most recent items on Grasmick.com's News section dates back to 2001!

The world of immigration into the US has really changed quite a bit since 2001, post-9/11 especially. For a start the INS doesn't even exist anymore and was replaced with the DHS.

So if the rest of his information is from this era and pre-DHS then it's pretty much worthless.

For some silly reason he's basically abandoned the website and what used to be incredibly helpful forums.

However, looking at the green card application process on the TN it doesn't look like it's any easier than it is on an H1B.

The lawyers that I've talked to have told me the backlog is about six to seven years long and have not mentioned any special treatment for Canadians.

I've heard that you can get through faster if you have advanced degrees, but nothing about nationality.

Can you send me his or her info? You can get my contact details from my HN profile page.

I have browsed through the various ways to get a green card and as far as I can tell the only way I can get it is either through getting a job at some company in the US or winning the lottery.

I'm starting the green card process, and fwiw, the lawyer tells me it takes a minimum of 16 months, with 2 years being typical.

a: which kind of green card you're getting (employment, family or lottery based are the main ones)

b: where you are applying from (some states will process stuff exponentially faster than others, some processing centers are slow right now due to office re-orgs, and finally anything overseas is going to take you x*4, where x is the time locally)

c: the quality of your lawyer.

You should only apply for a visa when you are reasonably sure you will get it (i.e. have an offer of employment, funds or family to sponsor you).

Nowdays regardless of what I'm doing, I won't say anything that'd remotely indicate that I might ever want to live in any country I'm visiting, lest I get in more questioning and hassle. And I'm an American, mind you, not exactly the country that people get the most skeptical screening process from.

If I was from a Baltic country or developing country, I'd try to casually work into conversation that I had serious commitments back home - good job, mortgage, graduate studies, serious relationship, things like that. (Actually, now that I think about it, that's what finally got me through that London questioning - when I mentioned I had to be back in Boston for my studies starting in late August, it was around July at the time IIRC, roughly five years ago)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_intent

On the Visa Waiver there is (used?) to be a box to tick if you had been denied a visa. I would imagine being denied a visa and not winning a Greencard are two quite different things.

It's some sort of twisted logic where ICE thinks that you'll try to jump the line if you travel to the US on a non-immigrant visa.

I think your friend might be having some other issues, not the DV lottery.

The UK sort of has both, family and skills can get you in. Recently, they have started to de-emphasize the family visas.

With points, you are at the mercy of the market of the host country. The UK has, recently, restricted the high-tech industry in some areas, but hairdressers are still in demand under the points system. So someone with a BSc may actually be less qualified than someone that went to beautician's school under this scheme.