It's advance parole, not advance payroll, and that has to be renewed yearly, but other than that, it's accurate. A detail people might miss is that some of tho

It's advance parole, not advance payroll, and that has to be renewed yearly, but other than that, it's accurate. A detail people might miss is that some of those steps take forever, yet tend to have an extremely high success rate. For instance, I was hit by one of those times where priority dates moved back, so I spent about 4 years with my status being 'Applicant for adjustment of status'. I was not going to get denied, but I couldn't get approved either. If, through magic, there were no limits on visa numbers, the only thing that would stop about a million people to be given a green card overnight is manpower. They all qualify. They all are living in the US, and probably will continue doing so forever barring something terrible happening to their companies, but they are not officially permanent residents. This also slows down citizenship too. You can apply for it after 5 years as a permanent resident. I've been living in the US, legally and without interruptions, since 1997, but I won't have my five years of permanent residency until 2017.