Category Archives: Green Card & Citizenship

Information to become a permanent resident, get a passport, vote and becoming a US citizen

Green Card Lottery Winners (DV-2013) Announced May 2012

Green Card & Citizenship

The DV-2013 green card lottery (diversity visa lottery) winners were announced in May for the lottery that was held online from October to November in 2011. As we did last year we thought we do a general announcement post as well answer a couple of common questions we received over the past 12 months.

Fortunately there has been no issue as there was last year with Green Card Lottery Winners where the initial announced winners had to be recalled and there was ultimately a federal court challenge which was eventually dismissed

You should note that being selected as a winner does not guarantee you a green card as you must pass some additional criteria as well in the application process. The actual DV-2013 visas will be issued between the period of October 1, 2012, and September 30, 2013. Applicants must obtain the diversity visa or adjust status by the end of the fiscal year.

Unfortunately those who missed out on the green card and permanent residency will NOT receive any notification however you will be able to check the status of their entry through the E-DV website. You must have kept the confirmation page information from when you entered the DV Lottery between October and December 2011.

As an example of what it looks like if you don’t win;

The results should be sent out to the lucky applicants with an official letter from the U.S. Department of State Kentucky Consular Center in Williamsburg, Kentucky. All notifications are by mail to your nominated address and you should note that there is NOT any email notification. It seems like already people have started receiving their winning letters so hopefully this will be the case for all of you that read this post and applied!

The notification letters will have additional instructions, including information about additional forms and other documentation required as well as immigrant visa application fees.

The Interviews for the DV-2013 visa lottery program begin from later Summer 2012 onwards and foreigners who applied overseas will receive an appointment letter from the Kentucky Consular Center about 5 weeks before the scheduled appointment.

A couple of additional points to note.

1. Be patient with receiving the 2nd letter if you have received the first as sometime the mail is slow. The only people that you can contact that will give you any insightful information if you are a winner and received the first letter is the KCC.

2. Check the US government websites to see the current dates for your number if you are a winner

3. If you were a child on a winner’s application and since turned 21 after being 20 at the time of application, you are still eligible as your age is frozen. However you must take up the green card within a year as otherwise you will be ineligible

4. High School education or its equivalent as per the requirements of the primary applicant means the successful completion of a twelve year course of elementary/primary and secondary education in the U.S. or successful completion in another county of a formal course of elementary/primary and secondary education that is comparable to the US 12 year education system.

5. If you are currently residing in the US on another non-immigrant visa, you are able to adjust your status within the US if you are a winner

Also FYI, the Green Card Lottery (DV-2014) will begin in October 2012 for those wanting to enter this year with more information about this lottery due by September.

Good Luck

CJ

Green Card Wait Times To Decrease For Indians & Chinese?

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The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011 was one of the very few bills in recent years that passed the House of Representatives branch of the US Congress in a bipartisan manner. With a vote of 389 – 15, the major focus of the bill is to remove the nationality caps of the Employment Based Visa Green Cards like the EB2 and EB3 Visas which are used most often by people who are currently working in the US on H1B visas, E3 Visas and L1 Visas to gain Permanent Residency in the US.

Currently there are about 140,000 EB Green Card Visas issued each year and only a maximum of 7% can be issued to any one nationality annually. What that has meant in practice for the EB2 and EB3 categories is that b/c of the sheer number of Indian and Chinese applicants in particular, that there is a large backlog of waiting lists of people working in the US in limbo not being able to move up or on in their jobs, passing up promotions and better offers, etc. waiting for their visa number in the queue to be called.

For the EB2 category it is about a 4-6 year wait for Indians and Chinese and in the EB3 category that goes up to 10 years and beyond. Of course if the nationality cap is removed then many citizens from other countries in both these categories who had jumped ahead in the queue b/c of these limits may have to wait a bit longer.

Sadly each year many of the 140,000 green card visas go to waste with people who have abandoned their application and returned home or moved elsewhere and b/c of the nature of the law these are wasted for good. If all the green card visas that had been wasted over the last few years had allowed to be reused (so not increasing any caps just using what was already authorized by the US Congress), then the entire current backlog for EB2 and EB3 would be removed for all nations. This actually has been done once before in the early 2000s but such a “radical” or more correctly logical move would seen to be too hard in today’s politically charged, cable news driven, extreme partisan US Immigration landscape.

The startling part of this so far is that it was able to pass with such overwhelming support from Conservative and Tea Party backed Republicans and Liberal and Most Left Leaning Democrats alike. The major premise is so that the US retains high skilled talent to help grow the economy and create jobs. According to Bloomberg, only 15% of visas are granted for economic reasons, a policy that undermines U.S. companies competing in a global talent pool.

Then foreign students studying in the US account for the majority of computer science and engineering doctorates earned from U.S. institutions. (In 2006, more than 4,500 foreign students earned engineering Ph.D.’s in the U.S., almost two-thirds of the total.) There is no policy or incentivized scheme to get them to stay in the U.S. after graduation given that these immigrants have a much higher propensity to create new businesses. We have mentioned before the Duke University study found that foreign immigrants helped found more than a quarter of the technology and engineering companies established in the U.S. between 1995 and 2005 (inc. Google, Yahoo, Paypal, etc.) so a huge amount of jobs and wealth for the US and her citizens.

However there is a roadblock!

One of our “favorite” politicians, Senator Charles (Chuck) Grassley, a Republican from Iowa placed a hold on the bill now it has reach the Senate. Even though it is expected to have broad support in the Upper House of the US Congress, it is now effectively in limbo due to the actions of one Senator for reasons that are not quite clear and that he has not fully expressed. Of course Iowa whose economy is still heavily influenced by Agriculture is not really a mecca for driving US innovation and wealth and nor is it a massive location for foreign highly skilled immigrants to reside, so really this bill would have very little effect if anything there.

However Senator Grassley seemingly unilaterally has put everything on hold possibly because of an earlier 2009 H1B and L1 Visa reform bill he put before Congress with Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois which thankfully has not gone anywhere as would be a major dent in the US economy.

We hope sanity prevails as it has in the House branch of the US Congress but I certainly would not be getting to excited as with the December – January Congress recess coming up and 2012 being a Presidential election year and where partisan politics is at its peak, anything getting done sometimes is a miracle.

Cj