Green Card Lottery – Overview and Benefits

Most people around the world wish to live permanently in the United States, which is the most developed country in the world. With lots of hopes, many students and professionals long to get a Green Card which will allow them to reside in the United States permanently. But not all who wish to immigrate to America, are able to achieve their goals, only few succeed in immigrating to the United States. They get lawful permanent resident status in America by getting a Green Card. The government of the United States offers many programs through which a foreign national may get an immigrant visa to immigrate permanently to the United States. Green Card lottery or the Diversity Visa lottery program, conducted by the US government grants immigrant visas to people from eligible countries.

Diversity visa lottery program is something for which many people wait, every year. All the people may not be eligible for an immigrant visa through the other programs offered by the United States. Moreover, the other programs are limited and are time-consuming. It is not so easy to get an immigrant visa without a sponsor in the United States, through the other programs.

Green Card lottery is an attractive program through which a lot of new immigrants with lots of hopes are given chances to immigrate to the United States and become lawful permanent residents. Legal rights are granted to the winners of the DV lottery, if they satisfy all the eligibility requirements, for an immigrant visa. This program which was started in the 1990’s, allocates 50,000 immigrant visas to the DV lottery applicants who are selected by a computer generated random lottery.

The Green Card lottery program is called Diversity Visa lottery as is grants visas to people around the world, ttherebycreating diversity among the population of the United States. It provides an opportunity for the people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States, to live and work in America, lawfully. Certain countries are considered ineligible to participate in the DV lottery program because of their high immigration rates to the United States. Natives of countries from where very less number of people have immigrated to the United States alone are eligible to take part in the DV lottery program.

Winning the lottery does not only provide an immigrant visa to live permanently in the United States, it also provides the winners with a lot of benefits. Though you cannot get a job in companies which hire only US citizens, you will be eligible to get an employment offer in other American companies. As you apply for an immigrant visa through the Green Card lottery program, you can include your eligible dependents in your entry and they can also get immigrant visas to immigrate permanently to the United States, if you win the lottery. A person who has no one in the United States to sponsor him can always choose the Diversity visa lottery program to get an opportunity to immigrate to America, provided that he is a native of an eligible country and he satisfies all the eligibility requirements.