US Green Card Lottery – Immigration Procedures

If you would like to get an eternal residential status in the United States, you will have to get the Green card, which is regarded as the identity card. It is otherwise known as United States Permanent Resident Card. The name Green Card comes from the color of the card and it has the individual’s photo identity and details belonging to the United States. Having a US green card means that the individual has a permanent resident status in the United States. Green cards are issued by Immigration and Naturalization Service and obtaining a green card is an Immigration procedure. It is obvious that a Non-US citizen would apply for the Green card and not people from the USA. There are different types of Immigration procedures that one can choose from to obtain a Greed Card.

One way to obtain this status is through family members. Immigrants can obtain this status through employment opportunities and also through investment. Another most interesting form of immigration type is through diversity lottery. There are two other ways of immigration procedures through refugee and asylum status and through the registry.

The diversity lottery procedure is generally used by the immigrants, who have entered the United States with a student Visa and would like to gain the status of a permanent resident in the USA. Diversity lottery services are otherwise known as Green Card Lottery.

The diversity lottery program provides over 50,000 immigrant visas. Many people who have been born in other countries in which the immigration rate is low also apply for Green Card Lottery with the desire to get an enduring residential status in the United States. The citizenship of the individual matters very little in this procedure. What matters most is the country of birth of the individual. People born outside the United States can apply for the Green Card Lottery program if their country has a lower immigration rate to the United States. The applicant can also apply for their spouse and dependent children who are unmarried and under the age of 21. If announced as a winner, they are issued the permanent resident status and would receive an immigrant visa for their passports, which needs to be activated within 6 months from the date of issuance at any port of entry into the United States. The immigrant will receive a stamp on their visa indicating that they are lawfully permitted to live and work in the United States permanently. Finally, the permanent green card arrives in mail within a few months.

Understand About Diversity Visa Lottery Program

Immigrant visa is necessary for being in the United States. For a permanent stay in the United States and for the work permit and filing of taxes, a green card is required. There are several ways to obtain a permanent resident status. The Diversity Visa Lottery program is one of those methods. There are many people now applying for this program through many sources. Statistics show that there are about 6.4 million applications for the 2008 Diversity Visa Lottery program or Green Card Lottery program. When account dependents are considered there were about 10 million applications for Green Card Lottery program. The highest numbers of applications were from the country of Bangladesh.

Applications from Africa were 41% and from Asia were 38% in 2008 Green card lottery. There are however many scam programs related to the issuance of the Green Card through lottery services. Reports show that the fraudulent green card lottery programs take money from the applicants in terms of the application fees between 50$ to 250$ and do not process the applications. There are now many websites relating to the green card lottery entry and issuance of immigrant visa to the USA. Attracting the customers with exciting claims is not very difficult with advancement in marketing strategies.

Some Diversity Visa programs claim that they would provide free airline ticket to the winner and some might even claim that they can increase the chance of becoming a winner which can be false. The winner would be issued an immigrant visa prior to the issuance of green card and it is issued by the Immigration Naturalization Services.

Applicants are advised to use the United States Government approved Green Card Lottery programs to get the most, out of their efforts in getting the immigrant visa with permanent residence status. These are available on the US government official websites. The State of Department has issued warnings to websites providing fraudulent information to the applicants. The best way to apply is to do a small research on the available sources for the issuance of green card and then decide upon which website to trust and go about with the application. There are also several testimonials available online expressing the satisfaction of some of the green card lottery program's participants and the individuals can use them to come to a decision. The Encyclopedia has loads of information regarding this which can be used to verify whether a website is genuine or fraudulent.