As anywhere else, it is easy to be born in the country, have family there and be well established beforehand. Everything in US is based on your credit history. You start as early as 18 building your credit score, earning credibility with the banks and other lenders. By graduation you are well on your way to put yourself in debt but it's ok, as you're an American and can reapply to other loans to cover the previous one. It doesn't matter if one has a debt. As long as you pay out some of it regularly, you are automatically classified as a good customer. Everyone is happy to do business with you. Let me clarify this in a mathematical way: this is induction - n+1 is easy for n > 1.
And then we, as we, immigrants, temporal workers, foreigners - come in. Just to get started can be a problem. The whole system is based on your credit score and not the size of your bank account or paycheck. So no credit history usually just leads to denial from lenders because you have no history of being a good payer and, consequently, you're considered as a bad payer. You're in the n = 0 case and the induction method fails. So in the country of immigrants, the system is set up a la "catch - 22". Fabulous.
So what do one do? The solution: bite the bullet, set up a prepaid credit card, be prepared to buy everything cash first 6 - 12 months, and wait patiently.
At the end of the day, here, it doesn't matter whether you use tons of dollars or you use 8$ to netflex. One day you will be at the bank and just like magic you will be offered credit cards with limit of 10.000$.
Nope, I guess not.