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Comment by adamnemecek | Hacker News Reader

Re: Green Card, you might also consider the Green Card lottery. https://www.dvlottery.state.gov I know that it seems like a long shot (and it is) but I got it on my first try and a friend of mine got it on the first try. Applying does not cost anything and takes about 10 minutes. The application period starts in October I think.

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I know through friends that if you apply for a green card once and don't get it, then it tends to raise a yellow glad on the next try. I don't know if this lottery would raise such a flag but I'd do research on it before blindly applying.

I think that you are talking about the standard way of applying for a green where it is imaginable that a rejection would raise flags during later applications. But in the lottery, if you don't get it, it's not that you were denied, it's just that you did not win it.

The lottery is different from that. The red flag being raised when you don't get a green card is mainly because your previous application process's issues still exist. For example, if you are scamming the system on a fake asylum request, you are unlikely to get a green card next time around even if you apply through an employment based system. The lottery is a randomized draw.

Source: I applied for the lottery three times. In the middle of this, I moved to the U.S. on a visa, switched visas, finally got the lottery and got a gc.

I was also selected on my first try. Actually my wife applied for me.

Just curious: it doesn't look like the lottery is open to new registrations. Is it only possible to register in certain periods?

Yes. October: http://www.dvlotteryhome.com/dv-2015-registration-period/

Expect around a 1% chance of winning.

I won the DV2013 lottery (I have about 3 months left to relocate to the US) and I remember the chances being as high as 4% in some places.

Or you just book a round trip with a few hours inside the US and you're good to go for the next 12 months in your home country.

This way you can opt for the wait-and-see approach regarding the evolution of the surveillance state trend and its ramifications.

It depends on where you are from.

So which countries are more preferable? And from where do you have this information?

People from Europe & Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, etc.) get 80% of the DV. If you're fromm elsewhere you have around a 1% or less chance of winning. (For Oceanians it's about 5%.)

Source: Wikipedia article on it.

That's not right. The chances of winning are, with the exception of Oceania, less than 2%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa#Winnin... (Oceania is 5.28%). I'm not sure where you got the 80% from.

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