The green card (United States Permanent Resident Card) is something the whole world is going crazy about for years and years now. What it basically does is, give you US Citizenship. Yes, you become a proud citizen of the United States of America with a green card. To obtain one, you can follow different methods. We will go through them but first, a little history.

The green card is named after a document called "I-151" which was being used in the post-World War II years for the immigrants. Since then the color of the document changed variously, and today even the card is somewhat yellow, the name green card is still being used to refer to the document.

To apply for a green card, one goes through a 3-step process.

Step 1 - Approval of petition: The application for a green card is approved by the USCIS. There are various criteria for approval depending on the applicant's home country. Except on some rare circumstances, the applicant must have a relative or an employer to qualify for the applicant.

Step 2 - Immigrant Visa Number: An immigrant visa number must be available for the process to continue. There's a problem here: the number of immigrant visas are limited every year, and they are distributed between all the countries so some countries have a larger number available for them. So this can take long. Very long. The exception is, if you have an immediate relative (parents, brother, sister, or children over 21) who is a US citizen. Then you're not subject to this.

Step 3 - Adjustment of Status: After the visa number is available, the immigrant has to go to the USCIS or his local US Embassy to adjust his citizen status and become a permanent resident of the US.

There are different methods of application. First is family sponsored application, which is basically "if you have family in US, you probably can become a citizen faster than anyone else".

Second method is Employment Based application. If you are a highly qualified professional, and an employer in the US really needs "you" to perform a specific task in his company, then you have a good chance of becoming a US resident in 6 months or less.

And the last method is the green card lottery.

The lottery takes place every year and a number of people are admitted from countries from which there were fewer than 50.000 immigrants to US the year before. To enter the lottery you have to fill out an official document that you can obtain from the US Embassy in your region. The guidelines for the document are very hard to follow and if you do anything wrong, you even can't enter the lottery!

An easier way is to find a green card lottery mediator on the internet and apply to the lottery through them. The process is simple: You fill out an online form, they send you a document with your information on it, you sign it, put a couple of head shots in the envelope and send it back. They take care of the rest.

But beware, there are a lot of scammers around. They tell you that they increase the chance to win the lottery, that's not possible. They increase the chance -okay, make sure- that your application is "valid". That's all.

There are other, bigger scammers who do not send your application at all too. A quick search over the net with the name of the green card mediator company will reveal what they really are.

So in conclusion, becoming a US citizen is not very easy. But you can obtain an immigrant visa if you have the skills and the patience to do so.