Green Card
by Debbie McGoldrickRSS 
Recent Posts
- Extending your stay with a 90 day holiday waiver - is it possible?
- Renewing my Irish child’s US passport without getting her American Dad involved
- Having divorced my American wife can I get my new Irish girlfriend a visa?
- I-94 arrival and departure cards in United States will soon be obsolete
- Can I reclaim an old Green Card and move back to the US?
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“I was reading on a website about a way that immigrants who are undocumented could get legal if they had been in the country since the 1970s. I didn’t do much research because it seemed ridiculous. Is this true? Why would such a law exist? It seems like it wouldn’t help anyone.”
A law called registry definitely does exist, and has been on the books since its creation way back in 1929. Registry allows undocumented immigrants in the U.S. to apply for legal status provided they meet certain criteria, chief among them a continuous residency requirement since the registry date on the books.
“My husband and I are considering adopting a child from Europe, preferably Ireland. We are just beginning the process of research and figured that the Irish Voice would be one of the best places to start. Are there adoption agencies in Ireland that specialize in adoption, and would the child automatically be an American citizen after the process is completed?”
Adopting an Irish-born child will likely be next to impossible for a number of reasons. First and foremost, there aren’t really any Irish children available for adoption these days – locating one would be akin to finding a needle in a haystack.
The Department of Homeland Security issued an immigration report last week covering fiscal year 2009, which saw exactly 1,130,818 non-nationals become legal permanent residents (LPRs), or green card holders.
How many of those people were natives of Ireland? Only 1,637, which represents one of the lowest totals of the more than 200 countries represented in the statistics.
