So family story for you. As you should guess from my username, I'm Canadian, as is my family. My grandparents moved to the US 15ish years ago and got their green cards. But when my grandparents got divorced, my grandmother found herself with no US credit history since she was just an AU on my grandfather's BankOne CC. (eagle eyed observers would notice what that morphed into)

Anyway after the divorce, between her lack of knowledge of how this thing works, and everything else, she got 2 CCs in her own name. Amex Green and a Suntrust Visa. She now has a Platinum card and is subsidizing our benefits because she doesn't take advantage of any of the perks.