I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

Hi Peter,

First of all, thank you very much for doing this.

My questions are about the USA Diversity Lottery (https://www.dvlottery.state.gov/), as I rarely see any discussions about it:

- Out of all the people you have seen who obtained a green card, roughly what is the percentage of them getting it through the lottery?

- Roughly how much time and money would the process cost? (I would assume it's similar to the ~2-4 years and ~$15K that a regular green card application cost?)

- Any other general comments you have about the lottery?

Thank you.

I have a TN and I would like to learn more about the legality of passive income forms like advertising, affiliates, etc. Where or who is the right place to get info on this? Thanks!

I can answer because I had an O1 visa, and from what I've understood the equivalent green card has roughly the same requirements. If I wanted to apply for a green card while on my O1 visa, I could have went to the same process (I chose to move back to Europe instead). Interestingly going from an O1 visa to the equivalent green cards doesn't require a corporate sponsorship.

Basically if you have something like a Nobel price or a Turing award, you don't need anything else to get the O1 (and probably the green card). If you're like most people and don't have this kind of award, you still have a shot but you need to gather as much evidence as possible. From what my attorney told me at the time, weight matters.

That includes, for science:

- publications

- recommendation letters (preferably a blend from business, research and politicians)

- awards (even things like "the best paper" of a small conference with only 30 papers from local researchers)

- interviews

- be a member of an association only open to certain persons (for example with a Ph.D. you qualify for IEEE membership, and they will deliver a good-looking membership certificate)

So having a Ph.D is not enough, but if are a decently successful researcher and have a good network for the recommendation letters (or your future employer), you can get it without being of Turing award level.

The "extraordinary ability" is applicable also for athletics or business, but I don't know much about those.

1. I studied in a HCI (Human computer interaction) program where there were a mix of programmers and designers. I found that after graduation a lot of the designers were applying for O1B and were easily getting those whereas programmers generally stuck to H1B's even though some of the projects that were being shown as part of the application documentation were group projects. Is it harder to receive an O1A for people in sciences because their work is generally not visual in nature vs O1B which is for arts (or designers)?

2. My OPT ends this month (June 30th) and my employer filed for H1B starting Oct 1st. My university issued another I20 (called CAP GAP extension) which start July 1st. But currently I am thinking about changing jobs immediately as my current employer is suffering financially and I am not sure how long they may survive. Is it ok to do that during the CAP GAP period if my new employer is willing to sponsor H1B? I have read online where some people say its ok but others say its not.

Thanks for the AMA