Dear Editors!
Last year you printed in your newspaper a fairly detailed instruction on how to independently participate in the green card lottery. I filled out the application exactly as you presented in your newspaper. But now I have some doubts about the reliability of your data.
Quite recently I got hold of a book by A. Demchenko "US Immigration Lotteries and the Immigration Process". Only an inattentive person would not notice the difference between your publications and the information in this book. And you yourselves said that any little detail leads to disqualification of the application. For example, punctuation rules.
A. Demchenko writes about the sample application for 2002: "The surname must be underlined and separated by a comma from the first name and patronymic." Nowhere in your newspaper is this stated. In Demchenko's book there is nothing about the patronymic being optional; according to your information, the patronymic may be omitted. That's what I did – I didn't write the patronymic, I underlined the surname, but did not separate it from the first name with a comma.
You write that the date of birth should be written as: 6 August 1970. A period is placed at the end. In Demchenko's example, there is no period. Regarding my mailing address. I myself know how street names with house numbers are written in English, but despite that, I wrote according to your sample (Prospekt Peremogi, 12), although in English it should look like: 12 Peremogi Avenue.
Let's continue. If an item on the application does not apply to the applicant, Demchenko writes that after the item name one should write "not applicable", which means "does not apply." The spelling of the postal code in Demchenko's application looks like this: Lviv 90561, Ukraine. In your application, the code is placed after: Lviv Ukraine 90561. In your case, the postal code is without a comma.
Will all this lead to disqualification of my application and the applications of other readers of "Zagranitsa"? Maybe it would be simpler to request instructions from the US embassy?
Your distrustful reader.
We think it would be most appropriate if the author of the book "Immigration Lotteries of the USA and the Immigration Process" himself answers the reader's letter. Especially since Alexander Demchenko is an old friend and regular author of "Zagranitsa."
The reader of "Zagranitsa" is not the only applicant who takes the instructions for filling out the application for the US visa lottery too literally. The fact is that the regulatory acts of the US Department of State, which govern the procedure for composing and sending the petition, recognize as mandatory only the list of information that must be indicated in the petition (application), not the form of its presentation. Although individual examples of data presentation are provided by the State Department in the instructions for participating in the lottery, they cannot be mandatory, since there is no requirement to adhere precisely to that format of data submission.
Even the order of presenting information in the petition is considered by the State Department merely desirable, that is, not strictly mandatory. Disqualification of the petition results from the complete absence of necessary data about the applicant or from discrepancies that may be discovered later.
Let us illustrate this assertion with a simple example from domestic legislation – compare the petition for participation in the US visa lottery with a statement of claim in civil procedural law. As in the State Department's regulations, the code contains a number of requirements for the content and form of the statement of claim. In particular, the law obliges the plaintiff to indicate his place of residence. At the same time, the code does not specify – and cannot specify – exactly where the index should be indicated and what punctuation marks should be used when presenting other data.
I will emphasize once again: the method of filling out the petition does not lead to disqualification if it contains all the necessary information. Since the Diversity Visa Program (as we call the US visa lottery green card) includes natives of almost all countries of the world, it is quite difficult to standardize the information received. After all, then we would have to establish, for example, that the words "oblast", "voivodeship", "canton", etc. should be translated as "state". There is hardly a need for that. It is not important how exactly the applicant writes the word "oblast" – as "region", "province", or "oblast", or how exactly he indicates the house number. The main thing is that the information is sufficient for the notification from the US National Visa Center about your winning the lottery to reach the addressee.
One can notice some discrepancy in writing the applicant's name. The instructions require stating the "full name" of the applicant. In our understanding, it includes the patronymic; at the same time, in the sample petition drawn up by the US State Department, the corresponding field is not provided. Practice also shows that the absence of a patronymic in the petition does not lead to disqualification at any stage of the immigration process. As for highlighting the surname, it is obviously necessary when filling out the petition by hand. In the State Department sample, as one can see, special highlighting is not required because the surname is simply entered into the appropriate field.
It should also be remembered that there is no single sample petition; everyone is free to compose it independently, and discrepancies in details noticed by the reader cannot lead to disqualification of the program participant. Only those commercial enterprises that lure gullible clients, instilling in them that they cannot do without help in composing the petition, usually claim the opposite.
FROM THE EDITOR: Of course, everyone is free to decide whether to trust the information published in the newspaper or to seek advice from official bodies (for example, the US Embassy). It's just that it would be useful to know that all the information related to the topic of the US green card visa lottery and published on the pages of "Zagranitsa" is prepared based on data provided by the US State Department and the US Embassy. And if anyone manages to independently obtain complete instructions on participating in the green card lottery from the US Embassy, let them write to us at the editorial office.