Tag Archives: green card

Diversity Visa Lottery Open

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Diversity Visa Is Available

 

Between October 1 and November 3, the Diversity Visa (also known as the Green Card lottery) is available. Each year, 50,000 applicants are randomly selected from the pool to become admissible for a Green Card. Selection in the lottery does not guarantee a Green Card. The applicant still needs to meet all of the standards for admissibility and process their Green Cards within the allotted time. Some of the benefits of the Diversity Visa is that it provides a pathway to Permanent Residence in the United States without employer or family sponsorship. It can also be a quick process.

The countries with the most immigrants to the United States are disqualified from participating in the lottery. The reason is that the purpose of the Diversity Visa is to expand the immigration process to individuals from countries who are not well represented in the overall immigration population in the United States. Natives of the following countries cannot apply for the Diversity Visa: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam. This list is subject to change each year, depending on immigration trends.

There are certain educational and work requirements that must be met to apply for and qualify for the visa. The country of “chargeability” is the applicant’s native country. A South Korean citizen living in Germany cannot claim Germany as the native country (there are possible exception based on spouses and parents). One of the hesitations about applying for the visa is whether it will have an adverse effect on future nonimmigrant visa applications to the United States. Nonimmigrant visas usually demand nonimmigrant intent, meaning no intention to stay in the United States. Applying for the diversity visa may belie that. Please consult with an immigration attorney if there are questions pertaining to the diversity visa and future consequences.

“High Skilled” Immigration Data

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NSF Releases “High-Skilled Immigration Data”

In the overall immigration rhetoric, one consistently positive aspect is the number of “high-skilled” immigrants in the science, engineering, and medicine fields. The debate often swirls about how to retain those immigrants, many of whom are at educated and trained in the United States. Hopefully that debate receives more substantive discussion and meritorious ideas as the presidential elections careen forward next year. The STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields dominate this discussion.

Last month, the National Science Foundation published information about the increased number of scientists and engineers in the workforce and immigrants’ role in that. In “Immigrants’ Growing Presence in the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Education and Employment Characteristics in 2013,” the data break down immigrants and U.S. born citizens and where the immigrants originate.

The data also categorize by fields and level of degree attainment

Visagate 2015 Update

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Visagate Update: FOIA Filed

This blog has been covering #Visagate2015 since its inception. The lawsuit, Mehta v. DOS, requested a Temporary Restraining Order for the purpose of reinstating the original October Visa Bulletin. The revised version made major rollbacks on the filing dates. The November Visa Bulletin retained the filing dates on the categories that suffered the rollbacks through the October revision.

The most recent update is that the American Immigration Council has filed Freedom of Information Act Requests with the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. This should help demonstrate why DOS retracted its original visa bulletin and how it did its math. The bulletin is an estimation and attempts not to waste immigrant visas, but the estimations are difficult because the percentage allocations for each category and the moving parts involved. For example, the EB-2 category for India and China has extraordinary backlogs. Approximately 28.7% of employment-based immigrant visas are reserved for EB-2. Then there are per country quotas, plus unused EB-1 immigrant visas that roll into potentially available EB-2 visas.

The American Immigration Council is attempting to uncover the rationale for the changes in the revised bulletin.

November Bulletin Coming Soon

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The November Visa Bulletin may be released today, two days after a federal court rejected a request to reinstate the original October Visa Bulletin. Instead, the revised October Visa Bulletin controls immigrant visas for the month. The rescission of the original bulletin was heartbreaking to thousands of backlogged Green Card applicants who finally thought they were eligible. It coincided with a brand new format, in which action dates and filing dates were posted. This was heralded as a modernization of the visa bulletin, so that thousands of visas were not wasted each year. The revised bulletin rolled back many of the family and employment categories months, even years.

Perhaps the November bulletin will resemble something close to the original October visa bulletin. The Department of State and Department of Homeland Security are defendants in Mehta v. DOS, in which plaintiffs affected by the revised bulletin are suing to reinstate the original bulletin.