Green Card Lottery

Do you want to live and work in the United States? Have you heard of the lottery? How about the green card lottery?

The green card lottery is a program through the Diversity Lottery that gives out 50,000 immigrant visas every year. Both the person and that person’s family will be authorized to legally live and work in the United States.

To be eligible for the green card lottery you need to be meet two requirements. The first one is that you or your spouse needs to be a national of a country eligible to participate in the green card lottery program. The eligible countries are listed on the website each year. The second requirement is you must have received a high school diploma or one of the required equivalent, or have two years work experience within the last five years where two years of training were required.

To apply for the green card lottery you must apply online through the State Departments website for the lottery. They are no longer accepting mail in application.

This lottery benefits 50,000 immigrants each year and was passed by the US Congress. Married couples are eligible to both submit an application, which doubles their chances of winning, since your family qualifies with you if you are selected.

Not everyone is eligible to participate in this program every year. You must first meet the requirements and be a national of one of the eligible countries from that year. Countries that are not eligible are ones in which the United States has already received over 50,000 immigrants from in the past 5 years.

Though the green card lottery does not have a minimum age requirement it is mainly designated towards people 18 years and up since a high school diploma or specific work experience is required.

The time period for the lottery is set at a specified time through the state department. As long as you apply using the online system, which is now the only way to apply, you are ensured that your application will be submitted on time. The system will automatically close once 110,000 applications are received.

Even if you were not born in one of the qualifying countries for that year, there is a chance to still be eligible. This is if your spouse or both of your parents are natives of one of the qualifying countries. You then become eligible.

So if your dream is to live and work in the United States it is now possible. 1 in every 70 applications wins the green card lottery. That is a pretty big success rate. You can check if you qualify free of charge on the dedicated State Department website.