10 Legal Problems Superheroes Don't Like To Talk About

The more established, accepted super teams like the Avengers or the Justice League will probably have the support of the federal government in obtaining visas, green cards or even citizenship for their non-American members. Of course, that all takes time - years, in many cases.

However, not all foreign superhumans living in the US are created equal - many of the X-Men, for example (a team who tend to treat US and international law as a set of bigoted opinions designed to keep mutants down) are foreign nationals.

Storm may have that whole African princess thing going on, but she was born in New York, so she’s got citizenship sorted out - but what about Wolverine, a Canadian who for most of his superhero career didn’t know who he was? Presumably they asked him to pronounce the world ‘about’ just to check he wasn’t from Pittsburgh after all… but how could the man have identification and citizenship when he didn’t have a last name?

Nightcrawler is German, Colossus and Magik are both Russian. Karma came to the US as a Vietnam refugee on a packed boat, and Wolfsbane is Scottish - the list goes on and on.

Now, the X-Men’s base of operations is technically a school, capable of applying for student visas on behalf of its students and foreign ‘tutors’… but those visa applications need to be approved, and in Marvel comics the US government tends to enact legislation (and building giant robots) to prevent this sort of thing, not rubber stamping it and waving them through.

Professor Xavier could, theoretically, sponsor them as their employer to apply for immigrant working visas, but the same issues apply - and he’d have a hell of a time explaining on the appropriate application what makes some of these people better qualified to work for him than American citizens. There’s probably no space on the form for ‘can transform into metal, then throw cars at people’.