[fourmii]

I'm an Australian, currently living in the US on a green card via being married to an American. While I sympathize with his plight and I also strongly believe that when you choose to enter a country, you should respect it's laws. He did willingly come to the US and overstay his visa, so therefore broke US immigration laws. Now I don't necessarily agree with the US immigration process, I believe it's rather tough and unfair not to mention a little demeaning and insensitive.

What do you do though, the immigration system doesn't seem to be set up to handle exceptions. Once you make one, you have to grant exceptions to others. It's a tough dilemna, Atanas has been seemingly a constructive member of society, hopefully paying taxes along the way. It would be a shame in this sense to punish such a person.

[ireadzalot]

It should be acknowledged that Australians have a special and easy way for coming to US and getting permanent residency. For example, if an Australian wanted to start a business in US, you are automatically qualified to apply for residency right away. (My information is based on what an Australian couple told me 5 years ago in the US).

[fourmii]

True, Aussies now have the E3 visa which is a work sponsored visa just for Aussies. But I came here years before that happened. I had to convince someone to give me one of the very rare H1B visas just to come over to be with my then girlfriend. We eventually got married and I applied for the greencard.

I'm not sure about auto qualification if you want to start a business. I think you need something like $1M in the bank to prove that you have the resources to start...

[hugh3]

Actually the E3 visa lets you hang around more or less indefinitely, but it explicitly does not allow you to apply for permanent residency.