From what I can see this takes at least four forms, multiple years, and possibly a significant chunk of change to a lawyer. Could you explain the process more since google is telling me it looks like a pain in the ass?

Pretty much any international person can emigrate to the USA by marrying an American. If they're already here on some type of visa like H1B or student visa, just simply upload your passport to NYC's marriage website (or go to Vegas I guess) and get a marriage license. Then have someone officiate your wedding and for a few hundred bucks and maybe 48 hours of planning total you are now legally married.

You can take this marriage to the US government to make an application for a green card for the international spouse, which will be received in less than 18 months typically.

Short answer, find an American (or even just an existing green card holder) that you love, marry them, and now you are able to stay in the country permanently and work in pretty much any tech job you like :)

Oh okay, I was actually looking at citizenship. If you don’t care about being a citizen and just want to work, I can understand that’s an easier process.

I gotta disagree with the "just marry an American" advice; sure, it makes some things easier, but due to a paperwork mistake in 1979 or so my mother-in-law was almost deported two years ago after being married to an American and living in the US for almost forty years (the mistake was a date on a form that no one had looked at for those forty years...). Green card was still quite slow for my dad even though he married a citizen....

Sorry for the lack of clarification. Citizenship would actually come relatively quickly after holding the green card as per normal. I suppose around 5 years is the normal waiting period? You just have to pass a simple test where you memorize key value pairs like "Who wrote the Star Spangled Banner?" "Francis Scott Key"

However American citizenship is of extremely dubious worth, even if you really like to travel like my wife and are limited by travel visa paperwork like with a Chinese passport for example.

Voting is not a particularly useful feature of American citizenship unless you live in a swing state and believe your vote to be important in deciding the fate of our country.

And most jobs that require citizenship like in government pay extremely poorly and have ridiculous arbitrary barriers to entry, namely a security clearance.

5 years is imo really long to get citizenship if you’re working full time, paying taxes, etc.