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James17555's avatar

Emigrants from very small countries sure to get US green cards?

Asked by James17555 (204points) July 2nd, 2010 from iPhone

The Green Card lottery gives away permanent work and living permits to people chosen at random. Different quantities of visas are allocated to being given away in different countries based on how many people from these countries immigrated in the last few years.

Now I’d like to know if very small countries, which can definitely not have sent many immigrAnts since their populations are small, have a very high chance of getting green cards for almost all of their citizens willing to get one because they have such a low number of emigrants and are therefore not really limited in their quota?

I mean, if my home country, where a little over 500.000 people live, has about 20 or 30 people asking for a green card every year, are they sure to get one because other countries have thousands of people immigrating to the US and tiny countries are negligeable or is there an overall percentage of Green Card applicants for every country that is approved, so that even if there were only 5 applicants in a country some of them would be bound to be denied a Green Card?

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3 Answers

JLeslie's avatar

I believe some of the laws regarding quotas have been lifted, although Mexican immigrants still have quotas to deal with. I do think that if very few people come from your country each year that you have a better chance though. I don’t think you get a green card right away, probably some other sort of legal residency. It looks like this act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1990 passed in 1990 specifically speaks about the US adding more available visas for people coming from countries who have very few people applying or represented in America. I don’t know if this act is still in force. Hopefully an immigration lawyer will chime in.

Here is the official immigration website for the US in case you need it.

john65pennington's avatar

The waiting list stands at about 5 years.

JLeslie's avatar

Huh, I just realized I failed to paste the link http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis

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