To become a permanent resident of United States of America you require luck, complete documents and a clean background.

The different ways a person may get a green card varies and some of these ways are listed below:

1. Sponsorship by the employer: If you get an employment in US and the company sponsors you and consider you to have a clean background then one can get a green card.
2. Sponsorship by a family member: If some permanent resident of US sponsors some of his close one then also it is possible to get a green card.
3. Investment as an Entrepreneur: If someone invests money to open a new firm in US that would help to provide employment opportunity to residents there than green card may be granted.
4. Diversity visa: Each fiscal year as many as 55000 green cards are granted in this scheme. This is luck based grant of green card. Random applicants are selected who meet the strict eligibility criteria and a random lottery system is used to grant green card. In some cases it takes years to be the lucky one.
5. Immigration through asylum or refugee status: Sometimes it so happens that do adverse condition prevailing in native country a person do not wish to return to his country to prevent himself from race, religion and cast riots then green card may be granted giving a refugee or asylum status.

So for Indians in US the first four ways to get a Visa are the most probable ones and once granted a Visa he is no more an Indian by citizenship.

Did you know that under the following circumstances the H2B visa for the United States may be used for both Skilled and Unskilled work?

1. An American employer, to handle the work load spikes of the peak months may choose to hire temporary staff. For that they can hire people using the option of the H2B visas.
2. Also in case there is a one time occurrence situation for an employer in the United States, they may opt for the H2B visa.

The H2B visa is used for a number of works for the both the employers and the job seekers in the United States. Some of them may be stated as manufacturing, health care, landscaping, hospitality or resort services etc.

The SOS Act (Save Our Small Business) of 2005 had actually splitted the total 66,000 annually available visas into 2 halves. Starting the financial year 2010, the petition for the H2B visa might not be required to be filled at a date earlier than 120 days of the actual requirement of the said visa.

The number limitations set by the Congress are as follows:

The total 66000 available visas would be divided in two halves which makes it 33000 for each half. The first lot of these 33000 visas would be made available to the workers starting from October 1^st till March 31^st, which is essentially supposed to be the first half of the fiscal year.

The next lot of the 33000 available visas would again be allocated to workers in the second half of the fiscal year. And the period for the same has been defined to be starting from the 1^st of April till the 30^th of September.

Now there could be a lot of people who have already entered in to the United States and are staying here. Also there is a chance that they also had to get the period of stay enhanced. But such instances would not be counted against the 33000 for the half. It’s only the new applications, which would be counted against the 33000 half yearly quota of the H2B visas. As per the announcements made from the USCIS, the latest update received on the H2B visa status looks extremely good. Against the cap of 33000 for the first half of the fiscal year 2010 only 11196 visas have been approved till date. Thus that would mean you have all the chance to apply for one for yourself.

The limits for the fiscal year 09, has been fixed as per the provisions of the INA Act (Sec 201). As per the said Immigration and Nationality Act (Sec 201), the annual minimum family sponsored preference limit is 226,000. However as per the same act the Upper limit for the preferred immigrants has been set to a maximum of 7% of the total applications received from the country for the employment based preference and the annual family sponsored preference. However, only 2% has been allotted for the dependent area limit.

The Sec 203 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, defines the preference of the family sponsored preferences as per the under mentioned.

First – The preference would be given to the unmarried children for the citizens and the number stands at 23,400 plus what ever is the surplus from the numbers allotted to the 4^th preference.

Second – The send in the line would be the spouses and children along with the unmarried children of the permanent residents of the United States.

Third – Third in the line comes the children of citizens who are married in different countries and are have been staying there. The upper limit for this category has been fixed at 23400 plus the surplus of the first two preferences.

Fourth – Siblings of adult United State citizens, and the upper limit of this preference e has been capped at 65,000. This category would also include the surplus of the previous 3 preferences.

There has been mentioned some preferences for the employment based immigrations as well.

1. 28.6% of the world wide employment based preference level would be allowed as the first preference.

2. People in profession who holds advanced degree. This category has been capped at the maximum of 28.6% of the world wide employment based preference level.

3. The third category is for the skilled workers and the professionals. Again capped at 28.6% of the world wide employment based preference level.

4. This category is for the special immigrants being capped at 7.1% of the total world wide level.