Green card - green light for moving to the USA

Every year, up to 10 million people around the world participate in the green card lottery, wanting to leave for one of the most liveable countries in the world - the United States.In 2017, online registration for receiving the coveted document is open from October 4 to November 7.What you need to do to win the diversification lottery - we figure it out together with StudyQA.

What is a green card and how to get it?

Green card (also Green card or green card, from the English green card) is a widespread name for an American residence permit, officially called the United States Permanent Resident Card.The document is an identity card or the so-called identification card of a person who is not a citizen of the United States, but has the right to permanently reside and work in the territory of the state.

A green card can be obtained in the following ways:

• in case of family reunification;
• upon marriage with a US citizen
• if you are provided with work in the country at the invitation of an American employer
• through obtaining political asylum or statusrefugee
• upon winning the diversification lottery.

In this case, we are interested in the last option for obtaining the status of a US resident.

Lottery (DV)

At the initiative of the US Congress, a special program "Diversity Immigrant Visa" was created, which issues visas to immigrants of different nationalities.Under the US Immigration and Citizenship Act, up to 55,000 visas are granted each year to individuals from countries whose citizens are underrepresented in the United States.

To participate in the DV-2018 visa lottery, you need to register on the websiteof the Bureau of Consular Affairs of the US Department of State .Anyone who meets two maincriteriacan participate in the lottery:

• Only applications from countries admittedto participate (Russia and many CIS countries are included in this list).
• High school diploma or equivalent must be provided.If there is no certificate, applicants must have two years of work experience within the last five years.

Countries participating in the lottery are drawn from six geographic regions, with the largest number of visas allocated to countries with low levels of immigration to the United States.Visas are also not raffled between citizens of states, from which more than 50,000 people have migrated to the United States over the past 5 years.As a rule, no more than 7% of DV visas are granted per country.The selection of the lucky ones is carried out randomly using a computer, then interviews are conducted with them.

Participants from Russia

The number of participants from Russia taking part in the online lottery is increasing every year.So,in 2015 , 268,772 applications for obtaining a green card were registered by applicants from Russia.As of2016 , according to the press secretary of the US Embassy, ​​the number of Russians who filled out an application for a visa was about 330 thousand people.Moreover, the US authorities annually allocate about 4 thousand visas to immigrants from Russia.In 2017, the lottery is held from October 4 to November 7, and its results will be announced from May 2, 2017 to September 30, 2018.

Practical tips

A few tips about participating in the lottery:

• Do not postpone the application for the last week - during the application, various questions and nuances may arise.
• To apply, you will need a recent photograph.
• Beware of Fraud!Recently, many attackers have been making money by informing the participants about the victory on behalf of the US authorities and asking them to send them money.Be careful and remember that only sites with the ".gov" extension are official US government sites.

Detailed instructionsand a list of participating countries can be found indocument .