Max Whittaker / Prime for NBC News

Sergio Garcia poses for a portrait in Chico, Calif., on April 2. Though he earned a law degree and has passed the state bar exam, Garcia, an undocumented immigrant, is not allowed by the state to practice law. He's spent most of his life trying to gain citizenship.

This article, the third in a series on the paths to citizenship, is part of NBC News’ special report “Immigration Nation,” an in-depth examination of immigration in America. 

For Sergio Garcia, the magic number is 25. That's how many years he will have waited for his green card if, as he estimates, he gets it in 2019.

Garcia, 36, is one of millions of immigrants seeking a green card, or legal permanent residency in the U.S., which he has called home for most of his life. His dad, a naturalized citizen from Mexico, sponsored him, and he was approved to begin the naturalization process in 1995 at age 17.

But like many other applicants, Garcia has to wait for a green card to become available since quotas limit the number given out annually. Authorities first told him it would take three to five years to reach his “priority date” – when he could start the five-year process of getting a green card.

“I was crying about that. I’m like … how am I going to survive five years without my documents?” he recalled recently from Durham, a community outside Chico, Calif. “Little did I know that almost 19 years later I would still be in the same shape. … You’re approved but just wait around … half of your life.”

Aspiring citizens like Garcia face decades-long waits, ever-changing laws and an unwieldy bureaucracy that leads applicants on an epic odyssey to the “American dream.”

As Congress prepares to unveil its long-awaited immigration reform, many would-be immigrants are hoping it provides a viable legal way for them to join their families in the U.S., with reasonable wait times they feel will discourage unlawful immigration.

The U.S. immigration system was refashioned in the mid-1960s to focus on family unification, though critics say it has hardly lived up to that ideal.

Now, applications for family-sponsored green cards represent the vast majority of requests for legal permanent U.S. residency: 4.3 million of the roughly 4.4 million applications on the waiting list as of November came from parents, adult/minor children, adult siblings or married couples, according to the State Department.

The previous national-origins-based system  was “very discriminatory” in prioritizing Europeans over Asians and Latin Americans, said Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000.

NBCLatino.com

Click to enlarge.

In a bid to provide an even-handed approach, limits were placed on how many family-sponsored and employment-based visas could be issued to immigrants from a single country. Today, that ceiling stands at 7 percent of the total. (There is an exception for spouses, minor children and parents of U.S. citizens, who go to the head of the line.)

But lengthy lines built up for countries with high numbers of applicants, such as Mexico, the Philippines, India and China, said Meissner, now head of the Migration Policy Institute’s U.S. immigration policy program.

“It’s become increasingly clear that this is just really a perverse set of outcomes that the people who thought about the ’65 act and passed it … wouldn’t have contemplated,” Meissner said. “To make family reunification be meaningful and make it be real, you just can’t have people waiting 20 years. I mean you shouldn’t even have spouses and children waiting two or three years.”

'Overpromising and under-delivering'
Some advocates of stricter immigration controls think these lines shouldn’t exist at all, saying family-sponsored green cards should only go to the minor children and spouses of U.S. citizens.

The waiting list “creates a political pressure for advocacy groups to demand higher caps,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C. “… They point to it and they say, ‘Look, this is unjust and we have to speed family immigration.’ It’s become a talking point.”

There is “no good answer” to cases like Garcia’s, he added.

“That’s the kind of thing that happens when you have a bad immigration policy that is jury-rigged and complicated and opaque,” he said. “The goal needs to be to define as clearly as possibly who gets in and then let everybody who qualifies in every year … and make clear that if you are the brother of a U.S. citizen there is no category for you, there is no line, so don’t get in it. The problem is overpromising and under-delivering.”

Garcia's story is in many ways typical of undocumented immigrant residents treading the family path to a green card, lawyers and experts say. His father had a green card but was not yet a U.S. citizen when he applied for his son, putting Garcia in a lower-priority category even though he was under 21 – the age when minor children become adults under U.S. immigration rules.

His dad became a citizen in 1999, which would have put Garcia on the fast track as the child of a U.S. citizen had he not turned 21 the previous year. Instead, he entered another line: unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens. Immigration is today handling those cases from Mexico dating to Aug. 1, 1993.

NBCLatino.com

Click to enlarge

That may appear close to Garcia’s priority date of Nov. 18, 1994, but don’t be fooled, he said. The line crawls forward about one week a month, he said, “and sometimes it jumps back real fast and by a lot.”

In the meantime, Garcia said, he has lost college financial aid and job offers because he is undocumented. He said he would have probably returned to Mexico if he had known it would take so long.

“It’s probably been a month or two since I last ended up crying because sometimes this life does get to you,” he said. “It’s not living, it’s just surviving.”

Even for those on a seemingly smoother path, such as a foreigner marrying a U.S. citizen, the family route still can take years.

Married ... with complications
Jeanette Smith, a former immigration lawyer in Miami who once guided couples through the system, is at the next step in the process as she tries to win citizenship for her husband, Agustin Gonzalez, a Panamanian national: providing documentation and going through interviews with immigration officials.

Applicants have to provide a dossier that includes the results of a medical exam, an affidavit of support from the relative sponsor saying the applicant has sufficient means of financial support and is unlikely to become a public charge, and any military, court and prison records, plus original documents establishing family ties between the sponsor and the applicant.

Many applicants must do interviews with U.S. consular or embassy officials in their home country.

Married in 2009, Smith and Gonzalez, 41, have had two interviews with immigration officials and have submitted documents such as wills, powers of attorney and three years of joint tax returns.

Slideshow: The youngest new Americans

John Moore / Getty Images

After migrating to the U.S. as minors, children take their oath of allegiance to become citizens.

Launch slideshow

The couple provided a wedding album, and affidavits from friends and co-workers attesting to their relationship, too.

But Gonzalez, who first came to the U.S. on a guest worker visa that expired, remains undocumented. Since the couple was married less than two years during their first immigration interview in 2009, he could only get a conditional green card that expired in January while they were awaiting the second interview, said Smith, 47, executive director of South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice.

It leaves Smith feeling scared that her husband could be deported, although judges can exercise discretion.

The immigration officer “has the ability to make a decision on whether my marriage is valid or not,” Smith said. “Who else in this world has the ability to do that other than the couple themselves?”

Though Smith knows she has more experience that helps her navigate the system, she said: “It’s difficult, I don’t think people realize it  …  People think that it’s some automatic process, and all your problems are solved. And it’s not.”

Some who make it through the process can still in the end be denied a green card for dozens of different reasons, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute's office at New York University School of Law.

“This is an amazing story in people’s resilience at some level and it continues to show you how much appeal the U.S. green card still holds, that people are willing to put their lives on hold for prolonged periods of time,” he said.

Max Whittaker / Prime for NBC News

Sergio Garcia helps Alma Garcia obtain a legal work permit at his office in Chico, Calif., on April 2.

Garcia has forged ahead despite the barriers. He graduated college and law school, and is leading a landmark case in California that could set a national precedent on whether undocumented immigrants can receive law licenses. In the meantime, he works as an independent legal aide.

He ultimately believes the wait will have been worth it.

“I still think this country is a great country and I think it will give me, in the end, a better future than I could have had in Mexico,” he said. “… I tell people my purpose in life at this point is to prove that the American dream is still alive and well.”

Follow Miranda Leitsinger on Twitter and Facebook. 

More in the 'Immigration Nation' series

Through the obstacle course of immigration, many paths to citizenship

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

By the numbers: How America tallies its 11.1 million undocumented immigrants

Theirs are the faces behind the numbers. A hard-working college student shot in her prized car. A fun-loving 2-year-old accidentally shot by his brother. An aging rocker killed for a thousand bucks.

As part of a special NBC News report, “Flashpoint: Guns in America,” NBCNews.com catalogued 91 shooting deaths across the country between Jan. 19 and 21, the weekend the nation marked the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and ushered a president into his second term. While not a statistically valid sample, the snapshot of gun violence in America is intended to illuminate both the magnitude of the problem and the personal toll such violence inflicts at a time of national debate about gun rights and gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.

The victims we found died during robberies, after arguments, in moments of despair. They were killed by loved ones, by strangers, by their own hand. Each story, in its own way, is heartbreaking. As the country awaits President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, we share a handful of them here:

Rebecca Foley worked as a babysitter, office clerk and cater-waiter to put herself through college, and she scraped and saved to make her first big purchase: a 2006 cherry-red Volkswagen Beetle. The 21-year-old business student adored tooling around Savannah, Ga., with the windows down.

Courtesy Sarah Shoup

Rebecca Foley, left, leans against her VW Beetle with friend Sarah Shoup in this undated photo.

On the evening of Jan. 21, she was driving home with her boyfriend of a year following behind in his own car after getting his nails painted because he lost a bet with her, police said. He got caught up in traffic and so she was alone as she piloted the car into her apartment complex’s parking lot, past the live oak trees and hanging moss, toward her tidy garden-level unit.

What happened next is a mystery, but the boyfriend told police that when he finally caught up, he found the little red car stopped at a bizarre angle and Foley slumped over the steering wheel. She had been shot, apparently while the car was still moving, and would be dead within minutes. The rear, driver-side window was shattered by a single bullet that left a hole the size of a 50-cent piece. No arrests have been made, despite a $6,000 reward, and the motive is unknown.

To family and friends, Foley’s violent end still seems unreal.

“She never was around anybody who would put her in a bad situation. She never had any enemies,” said Alixandra Scalia, 20, a former roommate.

Interactive map: A long weekend of gun deaths. Click to enlarge.

Friends and family members use almost identical language to describe Foley, calling her a beautiful, hard-working young woman who was determined to put old family troubles behind her and realize her goal of a degree, grad school and a good job in the risk-management industry.

Born in Charlotte, N.C., and raised in rural Virginia and Georgia by her divorced mom, Foley played the violin at 4 but didn’t read until second grade, after she was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder. She had a rocky relationship with her mother, Jennifer, and moved out when she was 17.

“She said, ‘I can’t live under your roof and I won’t.’ But she graduated high school, which doesn’t always happen in these cases, and she went on to college,” her mother told NBC News.

She bounced between several colleges and overcame academic setbacks before enrolling full-time at Savannah State University, where she hit her stride. Her mother said she “worked her butt off” to stay on track, and one of her professors wrote that she was a “joy to work with.”

She would rise at 4:30 some mornings to fit in work in a local insurance office before school. She kept her credit score on a Post-it note and cooked dinner with a friend every night to save money.

At Christmas, she splurged a little on her “very first cruise” to the Bahamas, said one of her bosses, insurance agent Mitchell Bush. She dreamed of buying a fixer-upper on Tybee Island, an island town near Savannah.

“We had just talked about that on Sunday -- and Monday she was dead,” said her grandmother, Lois Fowler.

The night of the shooting, Foley’s two roommates were in the apartment when they heard her boyfriend banging on the door.

“He was just saying, ‘Rebecca’s been shot and just kept repeating that,’” said Abbey Bernal, 22. “Medics tried to resuscitate her, and it was too late. I just saw them pull the sheet over her head.”

Friends and family said they can’t believe they won’t see Foley’s flashing blue eyes and big smile again. They remember how she loved cream of potato soup, wore SpongeBob slippers and doted on her Shih-Tzu named Zoe.

Jim Seida / NBC News

Jennifer Foley holds a portrait of her daughter, Rebecca, inside her Calhoun, Ga. home.

Foley’s mother said she and her daughter had grown closer in recent months and that Rebecca had called the day she was killed to ask what dishes would go well with a pork roast.

And there was another conversation she remembered.

“She called me not six months ago and said she had a dream that she was going to die young,” her mother said. “I told her, ‘I don’t think that’s true. I hope that’s not true.’”

******

Family members say they’ll remember 2-year-old Travin Varise for how his chubby face would break into the sweetest smile, how excited he got every time “Finding Nemo” came on, how he went after a drumstick with gusto.

And how he loved his big brother, Terrance.

Family photo

Travin Varise, 2, was fatally shot at his Baton Rouge, La., home on Jan. 21.

“Terrance growed his little brother up,” his aunt, Juanita, said. “Before my sister knew who the baby’s father was, he raised him up like it was his son.”

That’s why, the family says, it’s tragic that Terrance, 18, is now locked up, charged with accidentally killing the toddler while playing with a friend’s .357 Magnum at their Baton Rouge, La., home. He has not yet entered a plea.

“It’s so hard,” said the boys’ mother, Yarnell.

She was crying, but her voice took on an edge as she complained she had not been able to visit her eldest child because the jail is too far away. “I want him to know it’s going to be all right. I know he didn’t do it on purpose,” she said.

Terrance was on probation after pleading guilty to burglary in May, but his mother said he was a “good dude” who had matured since then. His aunt said he didn’t carry a weapon – “We don’t allow guns in the house” – but had been hanging out with “the wrong crowd.”

Terrance’s Facebook page, however, suggests an interest in guns. There’s a photo of a small arsenal laid out on a plaid bedspread, another where he is holding a silver revolver at his side, a third where he appears to be dangling a shotgun from one finger.

East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore says he sees pictures like that all the time after a young person is arrested for a violent crime.

“Do you know where your guns are? Because young kids play with guns and bad things happen sometimes,” he said. “I think it’s video games and stuff – no one really dies and everyone wakes up the next morning. There’s a whole culture of kids not knowing it’s real.”

Read Part 1: Death takes no holiday: Tracking gun violence over one long January weekend

Terrance Varise is getting his fill of reality now. He’s being held on charges of negligent homicide, cruelty to a minor and weapons possession along with a probation violation. He was not allowed to attend Travin’s funeral.

“He feels the pain and he’s going to live with this for the rest of his life,” his aunt said.

His mother said she feels like she’s lost two children.

“My father Jesus does things for a reason, but I don’t know what the reason is,” she said. “It’s a hurting feeling. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”

******

“There are two dead people.”

Those chilling words on a 911 call just after midnight on Jan. 21 were the last that anyone heard retired fire inspector William Liebrich utter. He hung up and then, police believe, shot his wife of 30 years, Colleen, before turning the 12-gauge shotgun on himself.

When cops arrived at the Warwick, R.I., home they found a note on the front door saying it was safe to enter and that the couple’s two sons, Bill, 24, and Jeff, 21, should not be allowed in. There were also letters for the boys, unsigned but typed by William, police say.

Before that, the sons said, it had been just like any other day. When Bill left for soccer practice, his dad told him, “Have fun. Be safe, bud.” Jeff watched TV with his dad before meeting friends.

Family photo

Colleen and William Liebrich, in an undated family photo.

“The thing that was so shocking about the whole thing is that life was moving along as normal. There wasn’t a single red flag, there wasn’t anything to show that anything like this could possibly happen. … It still feels like a nightmare,” said Jeff, an information technology student.

But life hadn’t been easy for Colleen. The once-active soccer and karate mom was mostly bedridden in recent months by a range of ailments: pancreatitis, osteoporosis, schizophrenia. She had suffered a seizure, memory loss, confusion and falls.

Warwick Police Capt. Robert Nelson said her condition was not terminal, but Bill recalled his mother hitting “an all-time low, physically and mentally,” on Christmas.

The brothers believe their parents decided together to end their lives. They said their father had never owned a gun and they assume he bought one to carry out a pact.

“It wasn’t just the fact that, you know, she wasn’t getting better,” Bill said. “It was the fact that she was progressively getting worse.”

The police are continuing their investigation into what they have tentatively ruled a murder-suicide and waiting for a trace on where the shotgun came from.

Bill and Jeff are treasuring the good memories of their parents -- their dad playing secret Santa and giving money to families in need, the couple's love of animals, the launch of their mother's salon business, which she eventually gave up because of her health – while coping with sadness and anger.

“I can see where my dad was coming from and I hate to say it like that because I don’t agree with what he did or how he did it,” said Jeff. “But I know what he was doing and the whole point was to put her out of pain, and he did that and she’s not in pain. So there’s a bittersweetness to it. “

Asked if they felt the need to forgive their father, Jeff said, “Obviously our primary focus is that we don’t have our parents anymore. … And so as far as forgiveness, there’s no one there to forgive.”

*****

Her “baby” was turning 7 and Lydia Bradford wanted it to be a day she would remember. She had ordered the cake and was getting the house ready. Soon, the cousins would start arriving for the party.

Her three daughters, including the birthday girl, were playing in the front of her Cocoa, Fla., house with another kid when a man with a ski mask burst in, police said. The terrified children fled as the intruder stalked to the rear of the small house and opened fire on Bradford, 24, and her mother Equaller, 58.

The young mom was killed and Equaller Bradford, shot in the chest and head, is still clinging to life. The motive is unknown and there have been no arrests, though family members suggest the women may have been victims of mistaken identity.

At Lydia Bradford’s funeral, relatives remembered her as a bubbly, carefree single mother devoted to her kids.

Cocoa Police Dept.

Lydia Bradford, 24, was shot dead by a masked gunman who burst into the Cocoa, Fla., home she shared with her mother on Jan. 21.

“Lydia didn’t sweat the small stuff,” said her aunt, Yvonne Smith. “You could hate her, but she loved you back. She was as pretty on the inside as she was on the outside.”

She supported her kids by working as a private-duty nurse. She had recently moved in with her mother and they were looking for a bigger place. Her weekends were full of cookouts and card games with family.

When her uncle Melvin was feeling low after chemotherapy, Bradford’s smile would cheer him up, Smith said. She chuckled as she remembered her niece’s sweet tooth, how she tucked into the homemade sweet-potato pie, lemon meringue pie, banana pudding and cake at Thanksgiving – then complained she had eaten too much.

Because she was a working mother, Bradford tried to make sure that holidays and birthdays were special for her girls. She was planning a Feb. 7 party at Chuck E. Cheese for all the cousins with January birthdays.

“Instead, we were all at her funeral that day,” Smith said, her voice cracking. “I know things like this happen every day, but it’s just sad that someone don’t care no more for life and took my baby away from her girls.”

She worries in particular for the 7-year-old.

“That was her birthday and now she’ll associate that for the rest of her life with the day her mama was killed,” she said.

******

The chain of events that led to Christopher Best’s death began when a big maple tree fell on the corner of his house in the Detroit suburb of Redford, Mich., in early January.

Best, 61, a computer whiz who had done sound and lights for countless rock-and-roll shows in Motor City, hired an old buddy from the music scene, carpenter Chris O’Brien, to repair the roof.

A few weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 21, Best drove to O’Brien’s Detroit home, with his dog Maxi in tow, to pay him $1,000. It was considered a relatively safe neighborhood, a historic district of Victorian homes, and Best had visited many times.

Photo provided by friend

Chris Best, a Detroit music engineer, was slain on Jan. 21 while delivering money to the home of a friend who had done some construction work for him. Police believe the motive was robbery.

But this time, as Best got out of his car, he was “apparently ambushed” by robbers, police say. The sound of gunfire – O’Brien says police told him it was an AK-47 assault rifle-- shattered the dinnertime quiet on the tree-lined street.

“A dozen shots came into my house,” O’Brien recalled. “They were going by both sides of my head. If I would have taken one more step, my head would have been blown clear off.”

When the shooting stopped, he stepped outside and saw his friend of 30 years lying on his lawn. “It was cold that night,” O’Brien said. “I got down and put my arm under his head. He was gasping for air.”

Best, he said, died in the ambulance. No arrests have been made, but police say the motive was robbery.

An IT worker by day, Best’s passion was music. He played the guitar and keyboard and had a reputation as a reliable sound man in Detroit’s music joints. His obituary photo showed him mugging with Alice Cooper.

“He was a good guy, a pretty wholesome guy,” O’Brien. “He wasn’t into drugs, which is amazing for the rock and roll business. He didn’t even drink anymore.”

Best came from a large family; he was one of nine kids. And for years, the bachelor had been a foster parent, opening his home to young people in crisis and mentoring others, friend Sergio Sanchez said.

“He had a big heart,” Sanchez said. “That’s why it’s so hard to believe they shot him down because if they had given him the chance, I’m sure he would have just given them the money.”

******

It was just a fistfight.

Steven Rosalez, 16, got into a scuffle with an ex-con, Julius Short, 23, as he left a store with his friends in Pittsburg, Calif., his family says. It’s not known what prompted the fisticuffs, but when the fight  was over, the teen and the older man, who was on probation, went their separate ways.

The Rosalez Family

Steven Rosalez, 16, was killed by gunfire on Jan. 21 after an altercation outside a store in Pittsburg, Calif., allegedly by an ex-con he'd fought with earlier in the day.

That could have been the end of it. But according to police, Short wasn’t one to let it go. He got a gun, found Rosalez and shot him in the back and another 16-year-old in the leg, they said. The other boy survived, but Rosalez died.

“It’s devastated the whole family,” his mother, Wynette, said last Wednesday as Short was arraigned on charges of murder, attempted murder and weapons possession. He has not entered a plea.

She said her son was a happy boy growing up, always surrounded by friends and active in sports until he decided to give up football and baseball in the 10th grade. He was “kind of going through a little rough patch” and had run away from home once but had never been in trouble with the police, she said.

He spent most of his free time with his girlfriend of four years and playing Xbox. He had two brothers and a cousin he treated like a third. He was finishing high school in an independent study program and taking classes at a local college.

“He was loved,” she said, crying.

Short has a 2009 conviction for assault with a deadly weapon and he was on probation at the time of the slaying, which made Rosalez’s mother angry.

Complete coverage of "Flashpoint: Guns in America," an NBC News special report

“I grew up around guns and nobody did this when I was a kid and now here are these people who are felons and on probation and they get guns,” she said. “It’s not right.”

Also contributing to this story and map for NBC News: Daniel Arkin, Meredith Birkett, John Brecher, Bill Dedman, David Friedman, Kriss Chaumont, Polly DeFrank, Shezad Morani, Lisa Riordan Seville, Jonathan Sweeney and Lisa Wilkins.

More from Open Channel:

• Death takes no holiday: Tracking gun violence over one long January weekend
• Obama administration deliberating more cuts in nuclear weapons, sources say
• EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans

Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook 

Jerry Garrison says it's a family tradition to have your initials in ink on your body.

So he says he saw nothing wrong when his 10-year-old grandson wanted his initials tattooed on his leg, NBC station of WTLV of Jacksonville, Fla., reported. 

The Florida Department of Children and Families visited Garrison's home for another matter, spotted the tattoo and told him, yes, that was a problem. 

The agency removed all of the grandchildren who were in the home and placed them in foster care, the station reported. It was unclear how many children were involved.

But Department spokesman John Harrell told WTLV that other allegations -- not the child's tattoo -- were the reasons for removing the children. 

"When you get into cases like this, is the child being abused? Is the child at risk? Are the actions of the parents putting the child at risk," he said.

The station reported that Garrison thinks the the tattoo played a role in the children's removal. 

Watch the most-viewed videos on msnbc.com

"I ain't never been in pain like this, it's the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. In my whole entire life," he told WTLV. 

Under state law, a child under 16 years of age cannot be tattooed unless it's for medical or dental reasons.

WTLV reported that the tattoo artist can be charged with a misdemeanor, not the parent or guardian. 

Children ages 16 to 17 can get a tattoo with parental consent. Once a person turns 18, the choice is up to them. 

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Iran sanctions trap both clerks, customers
• Young bullies apologize for tormenting bus monitor
• BMW misses parking spot, lands on Jaguar, Mercedes
• Alleged police impersonator busted pulling over actual cop
• Video: 10-year-old gets tattoo, grandpa gets in trouble

Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook