[jlees]

Depending on your qualifications, you can also get a H1-B job from a major US corporation and convert it into a green card. Being sponsored as the spouse of a US citizen is probably faster (especially if you are from a country where employment-based green cards don't have a current priority date), but the USCIS are suspicious of marriages and the process can be somewhat gruelling. You also end up with a temporary green card until you have been married for two years.

[azov]

Do you realize how long the process of getting an employment based green card takes? Oddly enough, it is possibly the longest way to obtain US residency. 5-7 years from the start is probably the average, and 10+ years is not unheard of. Most of that time the application is simply sitting idle on a shelf in some government office waiting to be processed. Illegal immigrant who crosses Rio Grande at the same time as someone on H1B submits his paperwork has a decent chance of getting legalized faster (there was at least one if not two amnesties while I was waiting for my GC, and each one slows down the legal queue because understaffed USCIS offices divert resources to process "undocumented" aliens). Getting GC through marriage or some refugee program is much, much faster.

It would be nice if US voters at large were a little more aware of how immigration laws work in practice.

[EDIT] I am in no way suggesting the marriage route, just pointing out that there are many countries with enormous backlogs and for people coming from those countries converting H1B to GC for the purposes of starting a company may, unfortunately, not be a viable option.

[jlees]

Actually, I have first-hand experience of this process. My comment was not made offhand.

It took less than 18 months from starting work as a H1B to receiving my green card. I started the green card process a month into my job. 8 How come? The system is ridiculous; I am lucky enough to have been born in the UK, and not in one of the countries with long years of backlog. I also did a Master's which qualified me for EB2. Between these, my priority date was current so the processing time was simply paper shuffling. Given the suspicion of USCIS around marriages and the process I am going through with my husband's green card, I certainly wouldn't take such a blasé attitude to marriage if you are also, fortunately and entirely randomly, in a current priority class.