What to do after winning the Green Card Lottery: step by step instructions

From 15 May 2018 of the year you can check lottery results Green Card-2019 - ForumDaily I told all about the lottery in questions and answers. However inlottery win Green Card It does not mean that they will automatically give you a residence permit in America. To obtain a cherished immigration visa in your passport, you need to go through a few more steps, during which you can face unpleasant surprises. How to avoid mistakes that may cost you green cards? Step-by-step instructions for obtaining a US residence permit from ForumDaily.

Winning is just the beginning

Every year, the US government allocates 55 thousands of immigrant visas that are raffled Green Card... There are always many more applicants - each year, on average, up to 9 million applicants participate in the drawing. Despite the fact that there are 55 thousand visas, more people always receive notifications of their winnings.

The reason is that not everyone brings what they started to the end: someone is not ready to bear the costs associated with obtaining visas, someone does not pass a medical examination or an interview, some applicants are refused due to incorrectly prepared documents. Therefore, the news that you have won the green card is not yet a reason to celebrate. This is just a signal for the start of a marathon lasting about a year.

So, if you are among the lucky ones and become the winner of the lottery green cards do not rush right now to pack your bags, quit your job and have goodbye parties. The process of applying for an immigration visa for Ruslana Yurina from Moscow took almost a year after she learned about the win in May 2013. “We collected and sent all the required documents in 2 weeks,” Ruslana recalls. - But only 10 months later, in March 2014, did they learn that the interview would take place in early April. It lasted about 10 minutes. We were immediately told that they were giving green cards. Exactly a week later, they brought our passports with visas to our home. ”

A month later, Ruslana and her husband flew to Denver, where she still lives happily. Their family has doubled since that time - the couple had twins.

How to find out about winning

The results of the green card draw are published on the official Online the US Visa Application Center - at the very place where the application forms for participation in the lottery are filled out. If you received a letter with a proposal to find out the answer on some alternative site, and even more so for money, know that this letter is from scammers. Nobody personally contacts the participants and winners of the lottery, all information about your status must be found out on your own.

Enter your confirmation number on the website, issued after registration in the lottery. If on the page that opened, you see a letter with a barcode and your data - you won! However, before receiving the coveted green card, you need to go through several stages as quickly as possible.

Step-by-step instructions on what to do after receiving notification of a win

1. Fill in the visa application form

The site Consular Electronic Application Center you need to fill immigration visa application form - form DS-260. It is filled in English. In the questionnaire you need to specify personal data, marital status, provide information about the place of work, study, criminal record.

If from the moment of registration for participation in the lottery you have changed the family composition (got married, gave birth to a child), then new members of the family should always indicate in their form DS-260, otherwise you can be disqualified.

For each family member - a separate form DS-260. This is an important nuance, and if you fill out one form for the whole family, then you immediately drop out of the “get a green card” marathon.

When the DS-260 form is full, the exposure page should be saved on the computer and then printed. It, among other documents, you need to take with you to the interview. The date of the interview will be sent to you after you fill out the DS-260 form.

Fill in the questionnaire better by myself. For example, Riga's Elena Cherevchenko did not receive a green card in 2013 due to contacting intermediaries. She collected all the necessary documents, underwent a medical examination, but during the interview she was in for a big trouble.

“I was relaxed at the interview, joked, smiled, it seemed that everything was going smoothly,” says Elena. - When I talked about the place of study and about my specialty related to fish diseases, I took it myself and said that in the company where they helped me fill out the questionnaire, they were also surprised what kind of education I received. When I realized that I had done a great stupidity, saying that I had not even seen the questionnaire in my eyes and it was completely filled out for me, it was already too late. It's been 3 years and I'm still worried about that stupid moment. "

Igor Veizberg also witnessed a similar picture. He has been living with his family in New York for more than 15 years - he arrived with a green card.

For the interview, Igor's family traveled from Odessa to Warsaw. “Several immigration officers and several applicants were sitting in the same room,” Igor recalls. - My wife and I were asked if we want to go to America. We answered that we want. This concludes our interview, we signed the papers that were given to us. The same thing happened at the next table - there a young guy talked to the officer, who was also handed papers for signature. And then the officer asked why the signature on the questionnaire and the current autograph are different - and in the 2000s, the questionnaire for participation in the lottery was filled out manually and sent by mail. The guy hesitated and said that his uncle had filled out the questionnaire for him. The officer immediately crossed out the sheet signed by the guy and replied that he did not receive a visa to America. ”

2. Wait for an answer

First you will receive a letter with the following text: Has been received and routed to the appropriate group. This is a standard letter which means that your visa application has been received. And in 7-10 days, another email will arrive, this time addressed to you personally.

Here are options for what can be written in it:

Your forms have been processed. If you received such a letter, it means that your questionnaires are in the processing stage, which can last up to 4 months.

It will not affect the processing of your case. This means that, filling out the questionnaire, you did not specify the number of your business, but at the same time your application is still accepted for processing.

KCC to begin the processing of your case. It means that Kentucky Consular Center waiting for your questionnaires, but not yet received them.

The information. This means that you indicated in the request information that is different from what you gave when you filled out the form for participation in the lottery.

The DS 230 Part 1 You submitted for the principal was incomplete. This means that in your questionnaires found inaccuracies that need to be corrected.

It received a copy of the amount of mail processed at a time. or It is acceptable for your visa processing. If you received a letter in which one of these phrases appears, then your questionnaire has already been received, processed, and within a few weeks you will be given the date of the interview.

Your case number is now current for interview processing. This letter comes to those who find out the date of the interview in a few days.

Has been scheduled at ... In the letter with such text you will see the date of the interview itself.

If you want to go to the Kentucky Consular Center yourself (Kentucky Consular Center), where all the questionnaires are processed, and find out at what stage your case is now, you can send a request to the email address: kccdv@state.gov or call: 1-606-526-7500 from 7: 30 to 16: 00. At the beginning of the conversation you need to immediately call the case number (Case number), the country in which the questionnaire was filled in, the name, surname and date of birth of the winner of the lottery.

3. Collect documents

Bye-bye Kentucky Consular Center examines your questionnaires and sets the date of the interview, do not waste time. Collect and translate into English the documents that you need. All documents that are not in English, must be accompanied by a certified translation. No notarization or apostille is required.

You need to prepare originals and translations of the following documents:

1. Passport
2. Birth certificate
3. Diplomas confirming education
4. Employment history
5. Help that you do not have a criminal record. If you have lived in several countries, such references are needed from each country. If you have a criminal record, you can still qualify for a green card, but be sure to provide a certificate that you have already been punished.
6. Marriage / divorce certificates
7. For those who served in the army - military ID
8. Statement of account
9. Documents on the valuation of real estate
10. Help with the work that you are an employee / owner of the company.

4. Check your health

When they told you the date of the interview, it's time to undergo a medical examination. This can be done only in special certified centers, the addresses of which can be found at Online... The cost of this procedure is on average $ 215 from each family member planning to immigrate (in different countries, the price may differ by $ 10-15), and vaccination is paid separately.

Passing a medical commission is needed to determine if you or someone from a family member has any diseases from the list that restricts entry to the United States. It includes, in particular, diseases of a mental nature, the active form of tuberculosis, leprosy, and others. Before 2010, HIV was included in the list, but now this virus does not interfere with obtaining a visa.

The list of diseases that impede obtaining an immigration visa, consists of two lists that can be found here и here.

After passing medical examination you receive a sealed envelope, which must be handed over to the consul during the interview.

5. Pass the interview

The medical board is behind, the envelope for the consul is in his arms, the date of the interview is set. For the interview, you will need originals and translations into English of all documents, the results of the medical examination and the invitation to the interview itself. On the spot, at the embassy, ​​you need to pay a visa fee - $ 330 for each family member. But this is not a guarantee that the coveted visa to the United States is in your hands. An interview is no less important than the preparation of documents or a medical examination. However, you don't need to specially prepare for it and read some scientific treatises or everyday advice on the Internet. You will be asked everyday routine questions.

The main goals of the interview are to make sure that the people who came for the interview were applying, to get their fingerprints and check them with the database, to see the results of the medical examination and to check the availability of all documents.

Ruslan Yurin, a former Muscovite and now a resident of Denver, recalls that in an interview with her husband, they were asked to take turns answering questions about where they met and what the apartment in which they live looks like: “Everyone was asked only a couple of questions, and then both were asked if we were confident that we wanted to immigrate to the United States. ” As Ruslana later found out, those married couples who have recently been married are separated for interviews - to make sure that it is not a fictitious marriage.

If you have been interviewed, you will be granted a semi-annual visa. It is during 6 months that all family members, or only the main applicant, will need to enter the United States, otherwise the visa will be canceled. Also, after passing the interview, you will be given a sealed envelope that you need to give to the officer at the airport.

An important point: if the main applicant is not able to travel to the US, then without him the family also can not enter the country.

This is exactly what happened with Andrey, who asked not to give his last name. Andrey is a Muscovite, a plastic surgeon, a successful doctor. I never thought about leaving for the USA. But his parents, sister and close friend played the lottery for 3 years, and then persuaded Andrey to submit an application. Further - the classics of the genre. It was Andrey who won the green card. Together with his family, he went through the entire registration procedure, and when it came time to fly to the USA - as luck would have it, he had the peak of employment at work. The family had to wait until Andrei could find time to travel to America. As a result, a month before the end of the six-month term, the family flew to Chicago, where their friends live. And Andrei still hasn't made a final decision - whether he wants to stay in America.

Read also on ForumDaily:

How an illegal immigrant can be legalized in the USA

10 ways to stay in the USA

How to get a green card through marriage

How to get US citizenship if your spouse is an American

Abandoning the American Dream: the story of those who returned to their homeland

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