After a four-year struggle to stay in the U.S., John Lennon was finally granted a green card on July 27, 1976.The document, which allowed the former Beatle to remain permanently in the U.S., was the culmination of a long and complicated legal battle that had almost seen the singer deported. In the final years of the Beatles, Lennon's political involvement began to pick up and his early solo years were marked by increasingly political songs and anti-war publicity stunts with his wife, Yoko Ono. This reached its peak with the album "Some Time In New York, which included songs supporting Black Panther Angela Davis and dissident John Sinclair. The Nixon administration, deciding Lennon was a threat, began proceedings to have him thrown out of the country.With Nixon forced to resign by the Watergate scandal and Lennon moving away from the music business (he would go into retirement in the second half of the 1970s in order to spend time with his son, only returning to recording with 1980's "Double Fantasy"), Lennon was able to achieve permanent residency in 1976.