What is Permanent Admissions?

There are 4 major factors that are included in the United States Policy on legal permanent admissions are the reunifications of Families. Admissions of immigrants with needed skills, protection of refugees and the diversity of admissions by the country of origin. Permanent Admission is the process of allowing a non-citizen of the United Stated who is living here under a legally recognized and lawful recorded permanent residence as an immigrant. This is the result of a Green Card. With a Green Card you are allowed to remain in a country that is not your own country until the date expires or until citizenship can be obtained.

There have been many Acts and Codes when it comes to permanent admissions to the United States. There was the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1958, The Immigration Amendments of 1965 and that was replaced with the National Origins Quota System and the Immigrations Act of 1990. There are two different types of legal aliens, the immigrants and the nonimmigrant. The INA defines immigrants with a legal permanent residents pr LPR and they can also refer to foreign nations that come and live legally and permanently in the United Stated.

In order to apply for Permanent Admissions, petitions must be filled out and filed with the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS, which is a department, located in the Department of Homeland security. Any United States resident can sponsor someone who is looking to permanently live or work here in the United States until a Green Card can be provided. If the applicant is already living in the US the USCIS will be handling the application through the process. If the applicant does not live in the United States, the petition will be sent to the Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs Officer and when the applicant arrives here their case will be handled by the USCIS adjudicator.

The Department of Immigration has set up a Legal Immigration Preference System; there are categories and the number of immigrants that the United States allows in every year. Here are just some of the few:

  • Immediate relatives, these are aliens who are spouses as well as unmarried minor children of a United States Citizen, the numerical limit is unlimited
  • Total Family Sponsored Immigrants, the numerical limit is 480,000
  • Family Sponsored Preference Immigrants worldwide level is 226,000
  • Employment Based Preference Immigrants, numerical limit is 140,000

With each family and employment based preferences the INA allows a certain number of Visa's every year. The INA also bases their Visa's per country levels. They tend to give Visa's to immigrants from countries that do not have an overwhelming amount of people already here on Visa. When it comes to those who want asylum here there is no limit but there is a 10,000 limit on adjustments for those on legal permanent residency.

Cancellation of Removal is where the aliens in the removal proceedings can grant legal permanent residence by an immigration judge because of hardship of outstanding circumstances. The limits on these are 4,000 with exceptions. Lastly there is a limit of the lottery that the US has every year, aliens from other nations that have a low admissions level have to have a high school education or at least 2 year working equivalent. That limit is estimated to be about 55,000.