I have some really exciting news;
I won the green card lottery and I'm now a permanent resident of the United States!
But what does that even mean? Am I going to be a US citizen and what are the chances of winning the lottery?
Hallo Servus and welcome back to my youtube channel.
My name is Felicia, I'm originally from Munich Germany,
but I have been living in the U.S, in Cincinnati, Ohio for about three years now.
So as of August 30th, I am on a legal permanent resident status,
which colloquially means that I got a green card
but it's not like I just won the lottery and they sent me the green card in the mail the next day,
obtaining a green card is actually a pretty complicated and long process
and for those of you who are interested in more details on this process and
more details on the green card lottery,
I actually documented all of my experiences going through this these past few months
and I'm going to upload this in a separate video in a few days.
So if you have any detailed questions or want some more in-depth information,
make sure to check that one out as well
but, in this video, I'm just going to share the most important facts with you guys.
So what even is a green card?
'Green card' is the colloquial term for a permanent residence card
which allows immigrants to permanently live
and also work in the United States.
Permanent residents have almost the same rights and responsibilities that U.S citizens have;
They're allowed to live here permanently, they're protected under the law,
they can obtain health insurance and driver's license, for example
they can join the army
and they're allowed to work here,
except for most government jobs.
A green card is valid for ten years and after that you can renew it
and, after five years of permanently living in the United States,
a permanent resident can apply for US citizenship.
Now, how do you get a green card?
There is a few different ways;
You can get a green card through marriage, through a family member,
through work under certain circumstances, by making a major investment in the United States,
or through the diversity Visa Lottery.
That's what the green card lottery is officially called and its purpose is to diversify the immigrant population in the U.S
by giving green cards to applicants from countries with low immigration numbers
So people from, for example, India or the UK aren't eligible to take part in the lottery
because there already are a lot of Indian and British immigrants in the U.S.
In total there are 55,000 green cards that are issued through the diversity Visa Lottery every year
and in 2018, for example,
there were 23 million applicants.
So only 0.2 of all lottery applicants get drawn in the end.
Now the requirements to qualify for an entry in the lottery are fairly low;
Everyone who is;
1) from an eligible country,
2) has completed a 12-year high school education or
3) has a certain amount of work experience,
4) doesn't have a criminal record
and 5) is of good health,
qualifies to take part in the green card lottery
and all winners who are married or have children or both
get green cards for their spouses and their children under 21 as well.
Depending on where you're from,
you have a different chance of winning;
For the European region, the chance of winning is 0.6%
and for Germany in particular, its 1%.
You can take part in the lottery once a year, there is an entry period of a few weeks each fall.
It's actually open right now until November 5th
and all you have to do is go to this website
submit your entry.
You'll need to enter some personal information about yourself
and upload a digital picture,
then in six months, you need to go back to the website and check whether you won or not.
When I checked in May 2018, I remember I was so nervous,
I entered my confirmation number and then I just read;
'You have been randomly selected'
and that was such a crazy feeling because I took part in it
the very first time.
Being selected is not a guarantee though that you're actually going to end up getting a green card
for, when you win, you only win for one fiscal year during which your case needs to get fully processed
and if it doesn't your win will expire.
In my case, I actually thought that it wasn't going to work out until like
half a year ago
but I was lucky things turned around and now I'm here on my permanent resident status.
So, if you were selected in order to claim your win,
you'll have to submit a pretty long form with
all of your personal information, your education,
your previous employers, the places where you've lived, etc.
And that's pretty much the official application for an immigrant visa
and then you also need to submit supporting documents for all of that.
If you're already in the US, you can either process everything through adjustment of status,
which means that everything will get processed while you're in the US but it also takes a little bit longer usually do
or you can do consular processing which means
that everything will get processed
through a consulate
in your home country and that's what I did.
So I had to wait for several months for my case number that you get when you win
to become current because that's when the Consulate or the embassy
invites you to an interview and I got my invitation fairly late.
I had my interview in August, which is the second to last month?
within the fiscal year for which I won.
So I traveled to Germany for about five weeks to attend my interview in Frankfurt, Germany
and to also just spend some time with my friends and family
and, before the interview
I also had to attend a medical examination at a licensed physician
and I was lucky because there's only a few of them in all of Germany
but one of them was in Munich, so that means that I didn't have to travel
for the medical examination, it was just in my city.
So they check your blood your urine, you have to take a vision test and you have to get x-rays of your chest
because they want to make sure that you don't have tuberculosis
and I had to pay all of that out of pocket because insurance doesn't cover that
and then you'll also have to pay two more fees;
One is $330 for the green card lottery
and then another immigration fee of
I think it was two hundred something dollars. So
getting a green card is expensive
and it's even more expensive if you have family because you have to pay all of this per person
but then, when you're at the actual interview, you'll also have to bring a bunch of documents originals and copies
to prove your eligibility for the lottery,
education certificates, your birth certificates police certificates
and some kind of proof of your financial resources
because they want to make sure that you can provide for yourself
and that you're not likely to become a public charge after you enter the U.S.
You need to prove that you have about $10,000 available per person.
The interview itself is just at a counter and doesn't take longer than a few minutes usually.
You have to take an oath and then in my case,
They really only asked me a few questions and most of those questions were things that I had answered in my application form.
So they were kind of rhetorical
and then they also asked me what my plans were for my life in the U.S
and then they let you know right away whether your application was approved or not
and if it was they're going to keep the passport there,
insert the visa into the passport and then send it back to you to your local address in the mail.
This is what the visa stamp looks like and with that you'll have to go activate your green card
within six months off the issue date of that visa stamp,
which means that you'll have to travel to the U.S
at least one time during those six months
and at immigration they will do the activation
process which means that they will register you as a permanent resident
and also initiate the printing off the physical green card,
which will then be sent to your U.S address that you provided with them
and this is what the actual green card looks like when you get it in the mail.
So yeah, it's green. The lottery is definitely one of the easiest ways to obtain a green card in case you win
and it's quicker than other ways but in my case it still took a while.
So I took part in the lottery in fall2017 found out, that I won in May 2018,
attended my interview in August 2019, and I just received my physical green card
in September 2019. So the whole process took about two years in my case
and, of course, the green card lottery is not only the easiest way to get a green card,
it's also the one that's most criticized and I have to say that I do understand the criticism but,
in my case, I can't help but just be thankful for its existence.
So what now? What are my plans? What am I going to do?
A lot of people keep asking me if I'm going to stay in the U.S for good now
and I'm going to tell you guys the same that I'm telling my friends and family,
I don't know yet.
Four years ago, I would have never thought that I'd even be in the U.S right now,
that was never part of my plans, but
life can't be planned. This is definitely an amazing opportunity because the green card,
compared to my
previous student visa and also compared to other work visas,
gives me so many options and so much more freedom.
So I'm probably going to stay here for at least another couple of years
but I'm taking it step by step and just gonna what kind of opportunities arise for me and what my future has in hold
and, if I feel like going back to Germany in a few years,
I can do that and I am very thankful that I have this kof freedom right now.
So I hope I could summarize the most important things for you guys in this video.
If you have any questions or I want to get some more details,
please check out my other more detailed video on this
or if there's still questions. Feel free to ask me in the comments below,
I'll try to answer them.
Thanks for watching subscribe to my channel if you like what I'm doing
which usually is a little bit more about German American culture differences.
Leave me a thumbs up, of course,
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and I hope I'll see you next time.
[In German] Bye!
