[bialpio]

"30 years" is factually incorrect. The requirement is to be a permanent resident for 5 years (I can find links if needed). Source: I'm currently awaiting my naturalization appointment, if all goes well the total time from setting my foot in the US to becoming a citizen will be few months short of 9 years (~2.5 years on work visa & 5 years on green card + ~1.5 years wait for naturalization appointment).

[bialpio]

With that said, it may be tricky to become a resident [1] in the first place. There are per-country-of-birth quotas, currently the wait times for people born in China / India can be significant (if taking the work visa route), up to 11 years. The longest wait that I see is for family-based immigration from Mexico - 24 years' wait for "married sons/daughters of US citizens". [2]

[1] resident to me means lawful permanent resident

[2] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

[legolas2412]

That may be true for you or the Greek person here. Not for indians, Chinese, and Mexican.

[bialpio]

Only one category ("married children of US citizens"), only for Mexicans, comes close enough to ~30 years total time (~24 years waiting to become LPR, +5 years being an LPR in USA) to consider the "30 years" as valid IMO. The fact still remains that the requirement for citizenship is to be a LPR for 5 years (this is the upper bound, there are cases where less is possible), it is the LPR part that may take time, as I've already mentioned in a reply to my comment. For China and India the total times are closer to 15-20 years. All of this is for family-based immigration, which I'd expect to be generally less interesting as it requires people to already have a fairly close family member who is a US citizen.