The process to obtain American citizenship can happen in two ways: you are born with citizenship, or you go through the legal process to become a citizen. The second scenario is the most common and begins when the immigrant applies for recognition of their legal residence in the United States, the well-known Green Card. However, the Green Card is only applicable if the applicant meets the requirements, such as through a job opportunity at a company based in the United States or by submitting to the authorities proof of their ability to establish themselves and remain in the country without government assistance.

To obtain permanent residency, the Green Card, it is first necessary to be approved for any type of immigrant visa that is valid in the future Green Card process. In practice, this journey usually begins with a temporary non-immigrant visa (such as an H-1B work visa or an F-1 student visa), from which the company requests an adjustment of status. Immigrant visas for spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens are always available, while other visas have a limit on the number of visas issued. When demand exceeds supply, applicants are placed on a waiting list until visas become available. The wait is longer for Indians, Chinese, Mexicans, and Filipinos, countries considered high-demand in the records, and it can take decades to obtain a visa. This specific backlog occurs because U.S. law establishes a fixed annual cap of a maximum of 7% of the total immigrant visas for any individual country, preventing highly populated nations from receiving all the available slots. The delay in obtaining a Green Card has two explanations: the bureaucratic delays in the document review and approval process, and the delay in making a limited visa available, with few visas being issued each year.

Given this scenario, it is possible to say that the time it takes to "belong," that is, to become an American citizen, does not have a single answer. It depends, first and foremost, on the path taken: those who have a direct family tie to a citizen or legal resident, such as spouses, parents, or children, tend to face a faster process, since these visas are always available and do not depend on annual quotas. Those who depend on visas with limited quotas, as is the case for many immigrants from India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines, may wait decades for a spot to become available, regardless of whether they have all the documentation up to date or have already been approved in a previous stage of the process. In other words, the delay is not only in the bureaucracy of document analysis, but mainly in the limited availability of visas in the face of high demand from certain countries. There are, in fact, two distinct obstacles that add up: on the one hand, the natural time for review and approval of the paperwork required by the authorities; on the other hand, the waiting time until a limited visa, of the type that is not automatically granted to all applicants, becomes available.

Therefore, although kinship was the most used route in 2023, responsible for 65% of Green Cards granted, even this "most common" route can vary considerably in duration, depending on the degree of kinship and the applicant's country of origin. Spouses, parents, and children of American citizens tend to follow this path more quickly, while other degrees of kinship or high-demand nationalities face waiting lists that can extend for years or even decades. It should be noted that obtaining a Green Card grants permanent residency, but it is not yet equivalent to formal citizenship. To complete naturalization, the immigrant needs to maintain a Green Card for a continuous period of 5 years (or 3 years if married to a U.S. citizen) and pass the immigration service's English and civics exams. In the end, "belonging" to the United States as a citizen is less a matter of individual merit and more a matter of fit: which visa category the person falls into and which country they come from.