The US immigration system has dozens of visa categories, and picking the wrong one wastes months and thousands in filing fees. This screener walks through your job offer, family ties, education, and background to point you toward the visa pathways that actually fit your situation.
Picking the right visa category the first time saves months of delay. An immigration attorney reviews your specific situation and confirms the strongest path at no cost.
US visas fall into 2 broad buckets: immigrant visas, which lead to permanent residency (a green card), and nonimmigrant visas, which are temporary and tied to a specific purpose like work, study, or a job transfer. The category you qualify for depends on what's driving your move - a job offer, a family relationship, a degree program, or an investment. Picking the wrong category at the start is one of the most common and costly immigration mistakes, since switching status mid-process can mean starting over.
If your pathway runs through a job offer, the specific visa depends heavily on the role and your background - a EB-1, EB-2, or EB-3 employment-based green card works differently than a temporary work visa, and an intracompany transfer uses an entirely separate L-1 visa pathway. Extraordinary ability in a field can also open up a faster track worth checking before assuming the standard route is your only option.
Family-based immigration uses a relationship to a US citizen or permanent resident as the basis for a green card. Immediate relatives of US citizens, meaning spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents, have no annual numerical cap and move fastest. Other family categories, like siblings of citizens or adult children, fall under capped preference categories with multi-year waits depending on the country of origin. Employment-based pathways instead require either a job offer with labor certification or, for higher categories, extraordinary ability or an advanced degree with national interest.
Most people entering the workforce in the US start with a temporary, nonimmigrant work visa rather than going straight for a green card. These visas tie status to a specific employer and role, and many require the employer to sponsor a specific work visa category matching the job. A temporary visa can sometimes lead to permanent residency later through employer sponsorship, but the two processes are legally distinct and require separate applications.
Certain criminal convictions, prior immigration violations like unlawful presence or visa overstays, health-related grounds, and security concerns can make someone inadmissible regardless of which visa category they'd otherwise qualify for. Some grounds of inadmissibility have waivers available, others don't. Anyone with a prior visa denial, deportation order, or criminal record should get an attorney review before filing a new application, since a second denial on the same grounds is much harder to overcome.