The Green Card Lottery (Which ends on November 3rd, so sign up today!) grants about 50,000 permanent resident cards a year for the purpose of further diversifying the United States. Green cards allow immigrants to live, work and study in the United States indefinitely and the Green Card Lottery is the easiest way to get one.
By becoming a permanent resident in the United States you are calling America your home and it is probably beneficial for you to learn about your new abode. The government of the United States is one thing that makes many Americans proud to be citizens. One document, the Constitution, establishes the United States government in rather short order.
The constitution establishes three branches of government the legislative, the executive and the judicial. Together these divisions work to strengthen the government in a very clever way. By being forced to regulate each other no one branch becomes significantly more powerful than another. This system is called Checks and Balances.
The legislative branch is divided into two parts (this is called a bi-cameral congress) the Senate and the House of Representatives. Members of both houses are selected from the population by popular election but their terms and size are different. The senate has two members from each state and they must be at least 30 years old. Representatives of the house are based on the population sizes of the state they come from. Smaller, or less densely populated states have less representatives than, say California, which has the most. Together the Senate and the House form Congress which is responsible for the creation of laws for the federal government.
The executive branch of the United States is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the laws created by Congress. Headed by the President (Currently Barack Obama) who is elected every four years by a national election for a total of two terms. The President is also responsible for the cabinet. The cabinet is a number of other Secretaries that handle various parts of the United States bureaucracy. The President is also the highest ranking member of the Armed Forces.
The Judicial branch of the United States is composed of many different court systems, the highest of which, and the one that handles federal cases, is the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is composed of nine judges who are appointed for life by the president. The judicial branch is responsible for ensuring that the laws passed and enforced by the other two branches are legal and conform to the laws set down in the Constitution. Supreme Court decisions are always very important and impactful and tend to make the front page of the newspaper when they occur.
This is only a very short and general overview of the three branches of the government and, in fact, there is a great deal more to be said about each one. Become a permanent resident and learn more about the United States government first hand!