To become a permanent resident of United States of America you require luck, complete documents and a clean background.

The different ways a person may get a green card varies and some of these ways are listed below:

1. Sponsorship by the employer: If you get an employment in US and the company sponsors you and consider you to have a clean background then one can get a green card.
2. Sponsorship by a family member: If some permanent resident of US sponsors some of his close one then also it is possible to get a green card.
3. Investment as an Entrepreneur: If someone invests money to open a new firm in US that would help to provide employment opportunity to residents there than green card may be granted.
4. Diversity visa: Each fiscal year as many as 55000 green cards are granted in this scheme. This is luck based grant of green card. Random applicants are selected who meet the strict eligibility criteria and a random lottery system is used to grant green card. In some cases it takes years to be the lucky one.
5. Immigration through asylum or refugee status: Sometimes it so happens that do adverse condition prevailing in native country a person do not wish to return to his country to prevent himself from race, religion and cast riots then green card may be granted giving a refugee or asylum status.

So for Indians in US the first four ways to get a Visa are the most probable ones and once granted a Visa he is no more an Indian by citizenship.

The Green Card Lottery for immigrating to the United States is supposed to start soon. Yes, starting 2^nd October the applications for the lottery would be accepted, under the diversity visa 2011 program. Popularly this scheme is also known as the Green Card Lottery by lots of people around the world.

For decades now the United States has been a destination of choice for millions of people for the purpose of immigration. They look for a better living standard in the United States and through this program the dream of a lot of people now would come true. Under the Green Card lottery program the immigrants would not require sponsors for themselves, who are already residents of the United States. The activity of accepting the applications for the Green Card lottery would last for approximately 2 months and post that the same would be closed. The last date for submitting the application has been declared to be as the 30^th Nov 09.

There would be approximately 50000 visas that would be made available to people all over the world under the diversity visa 2011 program, to citizens of countries all over the world. The lucky people are to be chosen by a lucky draw. The people selected in this random selection procedure would get an opportunity to be a citizen of the United States come stay and work here. But this does not happen without having to fulfill any conditions.

The eligibility criteria which are mandatory, for any one to be eligible for the diversity visa 2011 program are.

1. The person should have a high school certificate or equivalent for the educational qualification.
2. Or with in the last 2 years the person should have atleast a work experience for a work type that would essentially require a two year training time.

The Unites States government would allow both the spouses to submit their applications which could be helpful in the procedure of making their chances better towards getting selected in the diversity visa 2011 program.

To apply for the diversity visa 2011 program otherwise known as the Green Card Lottery does not necessarily mean that you have to get in touch with a lawyer or an immigration agent, provided you are able to prepare the paperwork your self. Its extremely important that do prepare the paperwork correctly else your application would stand rejected in the lottery.