To get green cards, these immigrants must prove they are extraordinary

Both women have been deemed “aliens of extraordinary ability” by Uncle Sam -- an elite cadre of immigrants who earn green cards, and a path to citizenship, by proving they are tops in their field.

While the "extraordinary ability" route can be one of the fastest, persuading a faceless bureaucrat they deserve permanent residency can be a frustrating, expensive, even humbling experience for high achievers who may already be household names in their homelands.

“The process is a nightmare,” said Anju Singh, the researcher with the National Institutes of Health, who was born in India and studied and worked in the U.S. for nearly a decade before she pursued the coveted green card granting permanent U.S. residency.

The payoff, though, is something many immigrants with less impressive resumes can only dream about.

“I have never been so excited about a piece of plastic,” said Bettina May, the dancer and pinup model who left Canada to striptease on more fertile American soil. “And it’s actually green!”

Fewer than 4,000 extraordinary ability EB-1A green cards -- which don’t require a job offer from an American sponsor -- were approved last year. A third of the applications were rejected, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Have an Oscar, Nobel, Pulitzer or Olympic gold medal? Getting the card should be a breeze. But for other A-list artists, athletes, scientists, educators and entrepreneurs, reams of documentation are needed to show they meet at least three of 10 criteria for the program -- from awards and media coverage to high salary and membership in elite groups.

May was touring the U.S. on a one-year visa when she decided to apply. Over four months, she compiled a 2-inch-thick dossier to demonstrate burlesque was an art form and that she had made a unique contribution.

The file she submitted in December 2010 had clippings from papers around the country, tape of her appearance on a “Real Housewives” franchise, box-office receipts and hard-won letters of recommendation from producers and venue owners attesting that she is the creme de la Can-Can.

While Miss Universe can land a green card in a matter of weeks, this Golden Pasties winner had to wait more than a year and a half because her lawyer left her birth certificate out of the application and the adjudication officer kept sending requests for more evidence.

“I was a wreck, thinking at any minute they’re going to tell me you have to leave the country," she said. "It’s so hard to live your life that way. What do I do if I get kicked out? If I go back to Canada, I’ll have to get a desk job.” After $10,000 in legal fees, May got her ego-boosting green card in August.

She also was pregnant when she decided to apply for a green card early last year. Between bouts of morning sickness, she badgered big-name scientists who had cited her work to give her recommendations and began reviewing research to satisfy an application criterion.

Among the challenges: translating her biggest achievements -- isolating novel markers to identify stem cells that make bone, which could one day lead to disease cures -- in a way that would impress an adjudicator with no scientific expertise.

While statistics show the percentage of applications approved hit a decade high last year, some immigration lawyers think it's actually getting more difficult to make cases, with frequent requests for more evidence that underscore the subjective side of the process.

Jeff Goldman, who practices in Cambridge, Mass., said he had to get the National Basketball Association commissioner's office involved after the feds expressed skepticism about the worthiness of Cleveland Cavaliers forward Omri Casspi, who stars in cereal commercials in his native Israel, was a first-round draft pick and was named to the NBA's all-rookie team.

"We have seen over the years it's harder to get these cases approved," said Michael Wildes, a lawyer who helped supermodel Gisele Bundchen and golfer Greg Norman obtain green cards. "We've seen the government go through (applications) with a surgical knife."

Adjudicators go from screening ballerinas to biologists. While there are guidelines, "in practice, there's a big standard deviation," said Cletus Weber, an attorney from the Seattle area.

His first forecast is that inflation will be notably higher by 2015, perhaps somewhere in the 4-6 percent range, numbers that seem comfortable enough as double digit inflation is always touted as the scourge of the economic system and the precursor of doom for all that exchange currency for goods and services.

A little known fact is that 2 percent is the Fed’s preferred rate. It is therefore understandable that 10 percent or more could give some cause for worry. According to Yun, the rates hit double digits in the 1970s.

The net worth of households across the country is on the rise again having grown each quarter since the first quarter of 2009. Homeowner equity is on the rise, credit card debt is dropping, as is delinquency rate.

It is difficult to have credit card debt without a credit card, and qualifying for a credit card is much more difficult than it was years ago when they arrived in the mailboxes and begged whoever found the plastic to go somewhere and spend as much as they could.

It was interesting to see that the trade deficit is shrinking at a considerable rate after having been more than $700 billion. It has been at $400 billion for the past four years.

Along with those tidbits of good news, Yun noted that rental rates have climbed both in number of renters and how much they pay. Once again, the credit crunch helped those numbers inasmuch as fewer qualify for loans and they have to live somewhere and landowners have more ability to raise rental rates when homeownership is more difficult, in a good way, of course.