Between the paperwork and the visa to come in, you're looking at 4 figures.
If you're trying to stay, you're looking at five figures, including immigration lawyer fees (and you most likely need one).
Then, there's the application itself, which asks you to verify that either you make enough to support yourself in this country without work, or that the person that is sponsoring your stay makes multiple times the minimum wage. You can't sponsor someone to immigrate to the US if you're on social assistance.
Here's a fun fact: rich foreigners use investment loopholes to skip the residency line.
Drop between $500k and $1 million on a "business" that employs a minimum number of Americans (like cousins with US citizenship), et voila! They get a green card too.
Trump Bay Street is a model of luxury as well as a model of a loophole U.S. developers use in a controversial citizenship-for-cash program.
www.pbs.org