Green Card Lottery

how Department of State turned honest businesses into scam with an ad...

I was surprised to learn many of my non-American friends either never heard of Diversity Immigrant Visa, best known as Green Card Lottery, or considered it to be some sort of "scam". "Who in their right mind would ever give green card lotteries for free? What's the point? Where is the catch?" - they laughed. The truth is the Green Card Lottery is real, but if you are not careful, you may become a victim of a scam and in this article I would like to go over things you should and shouldn't do in this respect.

First of all, there is only one valid address to apply for Green Card Lottery. The address is https://www.dvlottery.state.gov/ - everything else is a scam! Companies and websites of all sorts will offer you assistance in application, will apply for you, will promise to increase your chances of winning, match you with other winners etc. - all for free, but DON'T EVER DO THAT or it will cost you a lot of money and will actually destroy your chances to ever win!

For all of you with very little time to read this opus, here is a 4-point summary:

• Apply only at the above website!
• Absolutely no multiple entries!
• Do not seek help from people you don't trust, companies or websites, whether paid or free of charge!
• You can only apply between October 2 and November 2 of the current year

That's it, you are done, you know everything you need to know about the Green Card Lottery and may safely return to browsing Facebook! In the unlikely case of you being one of those very few ones who are curious to know more, I have a story for you...

I first heard of a Green Card Lottery when I was a university student back in Ukraine. Myriad of companies offering you to apply for Green Card Lottery were growing around the country like mushrooms. They were typically charging anywhere between $5 and $50 for application and had a photographer handy to take the proper photo of you on the spot. In fact, a good friend of mine, who owned a computer company offering various IT services, was running Green Card Lottery applications as one of the services - a very typical scenario at the time that was bringing good revenues. Everything was going well and all parties were happy until US Department of State gave them a lousy hand by running a public service announcement on television that Green Card Lottery is completely free and that charging for it is a crime.

Suddenly, everyone knew that you cannot charge for applying to Green Card Lottery application, but almost no one knew how to do it by themselves! Very few had access to the Internet, even fewer knew where on the Internet do you go to apply. Until this point everything was honest - companies were charging people for having their digital photo taken and showing them where to enter their data on the computer connected to the Internet. After it - lots of small companies whose main source of income was applying people to the lottery suddenly went out of business. But have they?

"One have to be stupid to abandon such a Klondike" said company owners, their answer to the Department of State was even more astonishing: "you want it to be free - you got it!" Suddenly all the companies that were charging $5-$50 per application just yesterday started doing the same completely free of charge! Now once people tell you they'd do something for you for free, you've got to stop and ask - where is the catch? Unfortunately many of us don't - surveys shows at any given time there are 15% of people that are extremely gullible.

You don't have to be extremely gullible to become a victim of a con artist - sometimes you just have a great day, where the universe seem to be at your side. That was exactly the day for my best buddy from school, who was on his way home at the bus station in Ternopil. He was working as a system administrator in a company with permanent access to the Internet and always meant to find out the website you apply for green card at, but never had time. Now that he was waiting for a bus and the booth right next to him was applying everyone for Green Card Lottery for free, there didn't seem to be any difference in him applying for free himself or them applying for him. They were so kind, that they didn't even need all the details of his biography, only his name, home address and a phone number just in case.

The percentages of the lucky ones who win the green card lottery vary from country to country. They say for Ukraine it is about 1 out of 100 applicants. My friend was the lucky one - next year he got a call from the people running the booth, congratulating him and asking for a modest fee of $10,000 for giving him his KCC letter. Yep, you cracked it - they filled in their own address in the application, while keeping his "on file". But that was only one side of their "business model"...

A good business model wouldn't just assume a randomly selected Ukrainian without access to the Internet who has to use a bus to get around will have $10,000 to pay for his American Dream, - it will have the right incentives put in place to help him achieve his American Dream! You don't have the money - not a problem - we will find someone with money, who is willing to pay not only for her part of the dream, but also for yours, - all you have to do is marry her! My friend was married with a kid at the time, none of which was mentioned in his lottery application, so marrying someone else was not much of an option as he wouldn't be able to take his real wife with him. Wife and kid you said? Not a problem, $10,000 per each member of your family you would like to take with you and we fix anything we did not mentioned on your original application. Sorry we can't fund your american dream at that point with a fake marriage, but you can try to borrow some money and then work your butt off to pay it back, once in America! The extra fee will include divorcing you, issuing new passports, where divorce will not be mentioned, and then marrying you again. Sorry your kid was born before you got married, but there is nothing illegal in that - the only thing that matters is that Department of State thinks you got married after you applied for the Green Card.

We, Ukrainians, more than anyone else don't like to pay for things, especially when we think we are being ripped off or taken advantage of. Naturally my friend started looking for ways to regain his KCC letter without having to pay the tip. Calling US embassy, KCC, militia - well, scratch the last one, those are with crooks - all seem like a viable options. But good business model is good because it covers all the cases, not just the favorable ones. This is why the company will go the extra mile to explain why the customer wouldn't want to exercise his options. Cause if he does, as a law-abiding company they'd have to notify both US embassy in Kyiv and the Consular Center in Kentucky that this very dishonest Ukrainian lied to the US government on his Green Card Lottery application about his address, marital status, kids and anything else they forgot to jot down at the busy bus station previous Fall. Not only lying to US government will make him ineligible for Diversity Immigrant Visa, it will preclude him from applying for any kind of visa for the next 10 years! At this point one realizes that not going to US is not an option either - who know whether you might need a visa to US in the next 10 years? As a year ago, the universe was on my friend's side - he managed to borrow $20,000, they got divorced and married again, they left the kid with grand parents and went on to pursue their American Dream...

Feels great to know the trick, isn't it? Sorry for the guy who got ripped off - makes you feel lucky you didn't actually win anything that last time you applied through a free booth at the bus station or a yet another american dream website on the Internet. Meet my other friend, not a friend really, just an acquaintance from school. He's been applying through the booth till his dad got to US on a tourist visa and stayed there illegally to work. Among other things, his dad learned where and how to apply for green card lottery on the Internet, as well as why not to apply at other places. He took over the responsibility of applying annually for his son and the rest of his now remote family, and surely enough withing a few years the luck struck him. He got KCC letter for his son, at the right address etc. and they started the process of moving him over to US as soon as their reasonably low number became available. The son got scheduled an appointment at the US embassy in Kyiv, he brought all the documents to prove his eligibility based on education or experience - everything was perfect. Perfect except for one little thing that made him ineligible - there was 2 entries into the lottery in his name. One was made by his dad, the other - by the people from the booth he applied with before. Try to explain that to a consular officer - he might even listen, you'll still be a cheater as far as Department of State is concerned since there were multiple entries into the lottery in your name.

Should you apply? The easy answer is - of course you should - it costs you nothing and you get in a year something, people from other countries wait for 15 years to get through employment. The right answer is, however, is - it depends. Depends on your personal situation, goals in life, wish to move to US, current immigration status if you are already in US etc. Unfortunately, not every country is eligible to apply for the lottery - countries that sent more than 50,000 immigrants into US in the last 5 years become ineligible until the number drops back below 50,000. Check the current year's instructions to see if your country is eligible. For even more complicated cases I suggest to read the books I put links to in this post or check some immigration forums

The stories so far were rather negative, but in the follow-up to this post (which I promise to write very soon) I will tell you also a successful one. Meanwhile the time is running up for this year's application period, so you'd better rush to apply for your American Dream...

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