Attaining a visa is the first step toward visiting or immigrating to the United States, and doing so can be a complicated process.

Contrary to what some may think, a visa does not grant entry into the U.S. It allows a person to arrive at a port of entry, where he or she must ask an immigration officer for permission to step foot outside of the airport or off the dock they land at.

Immigration attorney and immigrant from Canada Sidney N. Lachter, 67, said that the system can be hard to navigate because of all the paperwork.

"Immigration law is a very complicated mess," said Lachter, who moved to the U.S. in 1979. "It’s not rocket science, but if you’re trying to do it and you’re not familiar with it, it opens the door to too many bad possibilities."

These range from not turning in a photo copy of an original document to not signing on the right line.

Lachter says that the visa process was just as complicated 30 years ago as it is today. However, there are a few new security measures and longer processing times due to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Thomas Adam of the German band De/Vision found some of the security questions for getting his US visa frustrating. He graduated from high school two decades ago and had to call his mother to get the addresses and phone numbers of all the schools he had ever attended.

"It’s simply too much. Why do you want to know where I went to school 20 years ago?" asks Adam. "What does that say about the person that I am now? I am not a terrorist. I think that this is just a reason for your government to keep the people under control more and more."

After 9/11, additional laws were passed that increased the processing time for visas. Today all males between the ages of 16-45 and all student visa applicants must fill out supplemental paper work, according to the U.S. government visa website.

There is no single visa application. The two basic types of visa are temporary and immigrant. Within these two categories, there are many subcategories, such as medical and student visas.

Sidney N. Lachter primarily deals with marriage and working visas, which both have long processes of approval.

The process for a "straight forward" marriage visa of an American husband to a foreign wife, coming to the U.S. legally as student, first involves a petition that the husband must sign, accompanied by biographical forms for both the husband and wife. The wife then needs to sign an application to change her status to resident. Next, the wife will fill out applications to be able to work in the U.S. while the husband has to sign paper work stating "support" of the bride, which is backed up by his latest income tax.

There are also applications to be filled out for the wife to travel outside of the country while she waits for her green card.

In addition to the paperwork mentioned above, numerous documents are required such as copies of birth certificates (translated if necessary) copies of the marriage certificate, copies of divorce papers if applicable, documentation about the husband's employment, copies of passport photos and a medical examination for the wife. The process is the same when genders are reversed.

Lachter gathers up all these documents and makes sure that they are properly filed.

Visa application fees range from $131 to $355 according to the U.S. Department of State website. There are additional fees for other forms, such as the border crossing card.

According to a recent visa office report, 5,836,718 visas were granted at foreign posts in 2006.