Immigration Road Signs

A road sign is a board standing on the side of the road that provides information or instructions to travelers. Whether you are driving to the Grand Canyon, biking to work, or walking to a grocery store, you will see road signs everywhere. They are easy to understand. But if you are marching (or crawling) toward a green card, the signs you see along the Immigration Road may have different meanings:

I-485  
I-485 I-485 is a busy freeway: most people in the U.S. choose this route to get their green card. Unfortunately it has a speed limit of 10mph.
Speed Limit
Speed-limit-0-mph 0mph speed limit doesn’t make much sense, but if you are travelling on the Immigration Highway, don’t be surprised if you see it more than once.
Stop Sign  
Stop-sign Stop right there, and wait for further instructions. Department of Labor once put up a huge stop sign so that they could “centralize” all labor certification applications; it only took a couple years before traffic was moving again.
Road Closed  
Road-Closed-Ahead-sign If you pick the wrong route, or have a late start, you will see the road closed sign eventually. You need to find an alternative as soon as possible.
Traffic Lights  
Traffic-lights The Department of State uses traffic lights (aka visa bulletin) to control who gets to proceed, and who has to stay. Unlike regular traffic signals, a red light here could last 10 years or more.
Road Condition  
Slippery-road-sign Slippery
Dip-road-sign Bumpy
Flooding-road-sign Flooded
No Honking!  
No-honking Nobody would listen anyway, why bother?
Directions  
Complicated-road-signs USCIS sometimes gives out better, less confusing instructions, but not always.
Car Pool  
carpool If you married a U.S. citizen and the two of you are travelling together, you can take the carpool lane. There are multiple check points though, and people who get caught with only a dummy on the passenger seat will get into trouble.
Toll Booth Ahead  
Toll Every road is a toll road. Journey to green card is expensive.
Welcome!  
Welcome-to-California You have reached your destination.

All images used in this post are in the public domain, or licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 (Wikimedia Commons)

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