Getting a Green Card

A green card is an official document identifying a person as a permanent resident of the United States. It does not give citizenship to the card holder but permits him or her to live and work legally in the country. There are many ways to get a green card and the process can take several years. One common way is through family members who have American citizenship. The United States gives special consideration to husbands, wives, children and parents of American citizens.

Green card holders can also nominate their husbands, wives and children for green cards. A foreign citizen who has been offered a job in the United States can request a green card. The employer would serve as sponsor in that case. There are also green card qualifiers for some non-citizens who invest in America, for refugees and asylum seekers. Still all these paths leave out many people who want a green card. So, each year the United States carries out a lottery that provides about fifty thousand green cards to lucky winners. The official name of the lottery is the Diversity Immigrant Visa

Program. It is meant to welcome more people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. The Department of State holds the lottery through its Kentucky Consular Center. Those interested can enter by completing a form and sending it in. There are about twenty countries whose citizens are not permitted to take part in the green card lottery program. These include Canada, India, Pakistan and mainland China. Several Latin American countries are also barred. The lottery is open to all of Africa and Europe except for Poland and Britain. There are also education and employment requirements.

About fifteen million people entered the lottery last year. But, the system proved itself to be far from perfect. At the beginning of May, American officials informed twenty-two thousand people that they had won the chance for a visa. Last Friday, however, the State Department said it was cancelling the results because of a computer problem.

The State Department now says the computer programming problem has been corrected. David Donahue supervises the Immigrant Diversity Program. He expressed regret for the incident. He said the results from a new drawing will be announced July fifteenth.

There are dishonest businesses that claim to be connected to the green card lottery. These operations, often found on the Internet, try to get money from people seeking a visa. The State Department website says no money is necessary to take part in the lottery program. It says if a cost is given, then the business requesting money is not connected to the Immigrant Diversity Program and should be avoided.

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