Starting October 2, 2008, Russians will once again be able to participate in the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, a program for obtaining immigrant visas to America conducted by the US State Department. The so-called Green Card lottery is held once a year among those wishing to legally immigrate to the United States and obtain the right to permanent residence, study, and employment there.
Applications for DV-2010 must be submitted exclusively electronically. The diversity lottery form is published on the official website of the US State Department. Registration began on October 2 and will last until noon on December 1, American time.
Only natives of countries eligible to participate in the lottery may submit applications. According to the rules, all applicants must have a complete secondary education. The list of 'obstacles to obtaining an immigrant visa' includes venereal diseases, a criminal past, and 'incompatibility with the moral standards of American society' (engaging in prostitution and advocating polygamy).
After collection, the forms are processed by a computer, which selects the winner by random drawing. The lucky one goes to live in the United States. The US government charges no fee for processing green card applications until the winner comes to the US embassy or consulate for an interview. As noted by the press service of the US Embassy in Moscow, any letter to a lottery participant demanding payment for processing their application before the interview is scheduled 'should be considered fraud'.
The lottery was designed for countries with low emigration rates to the United States in accordance with Section 203 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, under which a quota of 50,000 immigrant visas is allocated each year for residents of other countries. The list of these countries is determined annually by the US government based on statistical analysis. Countries from which more than 50,000 immigrants arrived in the United States over the previous five years are excluded from the lottery. In 2007, along with Russia, this list included Canada, Great Britain, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, and others.
The press service of the US Embassy in Moscow recalled that the 'green' lottery had not been held in Russia for five years. 'The fact is that the United States has a quota for each country, but there was no quota for Russia, so people flocked to America in droves,' noted a Gazeta.Ru interlocutor. According to the diplomat, the main wave of emigrants from Russia came in the 1990s, and therefore in 2003 it was decided to exclude Russia from the list of lottery participant countries. 'There is no political subtext either in the cancellation or in the resumption of issuing immigrant visas. It's just that at first there were too many people, and now their flow has subsided, and we are ready to work with them again,' emphasized the press service representative.
According to US Ambassador to Russia William Burns, in 2005, 12,109 Russians received permission to immigrate to the United States, while in 2004 their number was only 5,729. Burns then explained the increase in the number of emigrants from Russia by the fact that it was mainly refugees seeking political asylum who applied for residence permits. In addition to refugees, many private individuals who had married US citizens, as well as those who had previously left the country but decided to return, entered the United States during those years.
However, in recent years, Russians have begun to travel to the United States more often for work, vacations, and visiting friends, but they no longer want to stay there to live as much as in the 1990s, the embassy says. Diplomats found it difficult to explain this phenomenon, putting forward several versions, among which they mentioned the growth in living standards in Russia.
Dmitry Karelin.
Gazeta.Ru er="0">