How to get a green card? Read this extract of an email I got today:

"The 'American Green Card' allows you to live and work in the United States of America, We invite you to participate in the American Green Card Lottery. If you are not an American Citizen yet, you should enter now for your opportunity to win a Green Card through the Congress approved, official American Green Card lottery program."

A lottery? I sure hope this is a scam.

And it gets even better:

"*** What's the participation cost? ***
Nothing. Participation for the US Green Card Lottery Program is free. We allow you to register online and ensure your application qualifies for a small fee."

Free, but you'll have to pay a fee? Right. Why don't these people simply write the word scam in big print on top of the mail.

RedX

I heard something about this... some countries actually do do it like this... your approved (eg. checked you're not a convict or something) application gets put into a lottery...
That's how they

Here they probably do it by trowing all the aplications down stairs and the one which lands the furthest doesn't get approved. The unlucky one receives a paper which instructs him to leave the country. Not as if anybody checks if he actually leaves.

RedX

The US does have a lottery to decide who is granted green cards. I don't know if the email you recieved was legitimate though. The US government allows a certain number of people to immigrate every year. Because the number of applications is very large, the government categorizes the them and then randomly picks the applications to approve.

Many many many people want to move to the USA. Legal immigration is best because the legal immigrant can utilize the legal system to be protected from exploitation and abuse.

Oh and if you get picked, the application fee is just the tip of the iceberg. You have to have a large sum of money in a verified bank account before entering the USA. This is to assure that you won't be destitute upon arrival. There are also substantial landing fees that would cover the cost of deportation. This may just be the case for a certain type of visa. I have never actually gone through this process, but this is the story from immigrants I've talked with.

-Mike_L

Sounds like the exact opposite of the immigration policy used here (Belgium). Here anyone who gets here is allowed to file an immigration request. While the request is being processed (takes at least 6 months) the immigrant-to-be get shelter, food and even money of the social security.
While this is a good thing for real political refugees, this system is abused by a lot of people who left their country because it wasn't as rich as the West is.

RedX

Hehe. Sounds like Denmark too, though they're currently working on tightening the rules of immigration (and in the process being accused of being racists).

I think the tightened rules are good. US immigration rules may sound harsh, but I think they're really fair, and I hope such rules are introduced here. :o)

On occasion they propose to tighten the rules here. It usualy ends with making themself ridiculous in front of the entire world.
(Some time ago a few ilegal under aged immigrants who had been convicted for several crimes, were
sentenced to be send back to their original country. Since they weren't adults it was a judge who can only judge over minors.
After they were send back, their government notified ours that those people had used fake IDs and that they were adults. So their conviction was invalid and they can come whenever they want.

They only party that takes this matter seriously is put aside every election for being undemocratic (even when they are elected by a great number of people, and have no real undemocratic elements in their program).

RedX