Every year, several hundred thousand Russian citizens apply for participation in the green card drawing. In order to pass the formal selection and become a participant in the lottery, it is worth considering what are the requirements for a photo on a green card, whether you can take and arrange this picture yourself.
Ways to get a green card
As you know, Green Card is a temporary residence permit in the United States, which allows its holder to work and study in the country, conduct business, take loans on preferential terms and receive social benefits, if necessary.
One of the most famous and common ways to obtain this document is to participate in the Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery, which has been held by the Department of State every fall since 1995. Annually, about 100,000 people from all over the world become its winners, of which about 50,000 eventually become holders of an entry visa and residence permit.
In 2021, 4,500 Russian citizens migrated to the United States thanks to this program. Winners are selected from eligible entries using a random number generator program. Before the drawing, applications undergo a rigorous selection and are screened out according to several criteria, one of which is the compliance of the photo in the questionnaire with the official requirements.
There are other ways to get a green card, including:
- reunification with close relatives;
- marriage to a US citizen;
- official employment;
- granting asylum.
But the purchase of real estate, contrary to popular belief, is not a sufficient condition for obtaining a Green Card.
General requirements for a snapshot to participate in the lottery
Consider the main requirements for photography for the green card lottery, in force in 2021. Since from 2021, applications are submitted exclusively online, the photo attached to the application must be digital or digitized.
The photo must be taken no earlier than 6 months before the date of application. Also, the following requirements are put forward to him:
- it must be colored;
- there must be only one person on it (of course, the applicant);
- the height of the frame must be strictly equal to its width;
- the background should be white or white with light shades of other colors, the presence of patterns and drawings, as well as foreign objects in the frame is not allowed;
- both eyes of the subject must be open (pupils and iris must be clearly visible) and directed directly into the camera;
- facial expression should be neutral (a slight smile with a completely closed mouth is allowed);
- it is forbidden to be photographed with glasses (this rule is relatively new and has been in effect since 2021);
- clothing must be casual, no uniform is allowed (except for the one worn for religious reasons);
- the presence of any headwear that hides the hair and hairline is prohibited (except for those that are required to be worn according to religious beliefs);
- the photograph should not have headphones or telephone sets, and if the applicant wears a hearing aid, he must be present in the frame.
Official sample photo for Green Card:
Another example of a suitable frame:
An example of a suitable photograph of a child:
For other examples of well-formed photographs, as well as the most common mistakes made by applicants, visit the State Department's Visa Section website. It also contains recommendations when making an application to use the services of professional photo studios.
Therefore, it is worth considering where to take a picture on the Green Card in Moscow. The following studios have the best reviews:
- “PhotoAll” (Miklukho-Maklaya St., 18, building 2);
- “Photocenter” (Beskudnikovsky Boulevard, 2, building 1);
- “Photo studio on Babushkinskaya” (Menzhinsky street, 9);
- "Photo service at Michurinsky" (Michurinsky prospect, 36).
In St. Petersburg, the best of all have recommended themselves:
- QQ atelier chain;
- Histudio (Furshtatskaya st., 9);
- “Photo for documents” (Tchaikovskogo str., 38/9).
In finding a suitable photo studio in other cities and countries, immigrant forums such as Govorimpro.us can help.
On average, prices for photos on a Green Card range from 200 to 400 rubles, depending on the urgency, complexity of photo editing and the location of the photo studio.
Lighting and shadow requirements
The lighting should be monotonous and white, without any glare. It also needs to be bright enough to provide the correct exposure level: blown out or too dark images will be disqualified.
The presence of distinct and pronounced shadows both on the face and on the background is not allowed. The absence of obvious shadows from the nose and chin is desirable.
Please note that even if a religiously worn headdress (such as a hijab) is included in the shot, the shadows from it should not fall on the face.
Requirements for the position and relative dimensions of the head
The head should be fully visible in the picture (from the top of the hair to the chin), none of its parts should be covered by foreign objects - clothes, glasses, hats.
The face should be in the center of the frame. The height of the head in the frame should be between 50 and 69% of the total height of the composition (between 25 and 35 mm).
The position is strictly full-face, without any turning to the side. The eyes should be 28 to 35 mm from the bottom edge. The official template will help you crop correctly:
The same template for digital photos looks like this:
Technical nuances
In practice, the requirement “the photo must be in color” is also interpreted as “the color rendition must correspond to reality”. Therefore, before taking a picture, you need to carefully adjust the white balance on the camera - otherwise the picture will be disqualified.
The “both eyes must be open” rule means, among other things, that the “red-eye” effect should not be present in the picture.
The presence of image defects - poor sharpness, coarse grain is not allowed.
Finally, official requirements state that it is not allowed to use photos from magazines, scanned copies of images from other documents (passports, driver's licenses), as well as pictures taken with low-quality phones and photo booths. In addition, it is forbidden to act in full length.
Requirements for digital and digitized images
Consider the technical requirements that apply to the format and characteristics of the photo file attached to the questionnaire:
- format - only JPEG (* .jpg), the program does not read other standards;
- file size (weight) no more than 240 Kb;
- the maximum compression ratio is 20: 1;
- resolution - 600 × 600 pixels;
- color depth - 24 bits per pixel;
- sRGB color scheme.
If you are going to digitize an analog photo, then its original dimensions should be 51 × 51 mm, and the scan resolution should be exactly 12 pixels / mm (300 pixels / inch).
It is important to strictly adhere to all the above parameters, otherwise the program will not be able to process your file and will simply disqualify the application.
Photos of children
Due to the strict requirements for the composition and quality of pictures, many lottery participants have a question about how to take a picture of a child. Unfortunately, even for infants, most of the rules and guidelines remain in place and failure to follow them may result in the application being disqualified.
At the same time, it is especially difficult to fulfill two points of the requirements:
- the child must be present in the frame alone, without parents;
- the child must look directly into the camera.
To meet these conditions for infants, two options are recommended:
- you can put your child in a car seat covered with a white blanket. This will provide support for his head and the correct composition of the frame;
- you can put your baby on a white sheet and take a picture of him from above. At the same time, it is important to choose the right lighting so that there are no shadows in the picture. It is advisable to straighten the sheet so that it does not form folds.
To get the child to look directly into the camera lens, try to somehow get his attention. If you plan to use the services of a photo studio, check with them in advance if they can take photos of children that meet the requirements of the green card drawing.
Self-preparation of a photograph
If you want to save time and money or do not trust photographers and do not want to entrust your fate to strangers, you can take a photo on the green card yourself. At the same time, for a start, it is worthwhile to carefully read all the requirements for the image once again.
Then you need to organize a "photo studio" - you can do this at home, you just have to curtain all the windows and organize uniform lighting using powerful white light sources. After that, it is necessary to provide a background - a large sheet of Whatman paper or a screen for a projector would be ideal, but you can do with a white sheet, a plastered white wall and even light monotonous wallpaper without a pattern.
Ask the person who will be taking the photo to sit in your seat and set up the camera on it. The use of a tripod does not hurt - this way you can clearly frame the picture and not worry that it may "blur".
Sit on a chair and ask the photographer to give a clear signal before shooting. It will not be superfluous to take several shots at once in order to choose the most successful one later.
After that, it remains to correctly prepare a photo for participation in the lottery. To do this, you can use one of the graphic editors. At the same time, some transcendental skills of owning "Photoshop" or GIMP are completely unnecessary - no complicated operations with the file will have to be performed. Moreover, they are even undesirable, as over-editing the image can cause it to be rejected.
Therefore, it is best to use the official cropper (fig cropper) of the Green Card Lottery for processing. It is launched from the website of the Visa Department. To start working with the program, you need to find and click the Start Photo Tool button.
In the window that opens, you need to click Choose Photo and select a file with a picture from your computer.
Now you can start editing the image directly. The task is to make sure that the face in the picture is inscribed between two green ovals. In this case, the crown of the head should touch the outer oval, and the chin should be on the inner one.
This can be achieved by dragging the image with the left mouse button held down, as well as changing its size using the slider below it or the "+" (which enlarges the picture) or "-" (which, respectively, reduces it) buttons located on it.
When you manage to crop the photo - click the Crop Photo button.
Now click Save Photo, which will download the processed file to your computer.
Another popular Green Card photo editing program is, of course, Photoshop. A ready-made template for processing images will greatly facilitate working with it. After downloading and opening it, you will see the following picture:
The vertical guide here corresponds to the axis of the image and it is desirable that it passes exactly between the eyes. The chin should "rest" on the lower horizontal guide.
The top guide should be as close to the top of the head as possible (and the top of the head should not go beyond it). Finally, the middle horizontal line should go through both eyes.
Let's consider the questions that most often arise when preparing and editing an image on your own. The main one is whether it is possible to retouch a photo on a green card. So, according to the official rules of the DV Lottery, any retouching can become a reason for the disqualification of the questionnaire. This even applies to such seemingly harmless things as background removal.
Taking into account that the check is carried out in automatic mode and no notifications about the participant's disqualification are provided (accordingly, the opportunity to change the photo is also not provided), it is better not to play with fate and only perform permitted manipulations on the pictures.
Very often there are complaints that the photo tool does not start on the website of the visa department. The most common reason for this behavior is the applicant's use of modern browsers like Opera and Google Chrome, which do not work well with outdated Flash technology and either ignore the application or try to download it as a separate file.
To solve this problem, you just need to use Internet Explorer 8.0. Modern versions of Mozilla are also able to open the cropper correctly, but for this you have to download the Adobe Flash Player.
One of the common problems that even professionals face is how to reduce the size of a photo for a green card. After all, even a file cut to the required size and resolution can still weigh more than 240 KB.
This is where Photoshop and changing the compression level will help, because the official rules allow compression to a ratio of 1:20. Taking into account that this range corresponds to the highest level of compression of jpeg-files in the program, you can choose the compression so that the file already has suitable sizes, but at the same time it was free of artifacts and image defects.
How to check a finished shot
Before uploading a file to the questionnaire, it is worth checking its compliance with the requirements listed above. In particular, for this you can use examples of correct photos on the green card and compare them with your picture.
However, a more reliable and proven way is to use photo validators, which automatically check the file against all the dropout criteria. One of them is available directly on the DV Lottery website. As soon as the acceptance of applications opens, it becomes available via the link labeled Photo Validator.
In the window that opens, first click "Select file" (position 1) and download the file being scanned from your computer. After that, press the Check Photo button (position 2).
If the file meets the technical requirements, the message Your photo is valid will appear.
In case of mismatch in format, size, resolution or color scheme, the validator will issue one or more corresponding error messages.
Unfortunately, other image parameters are not checked. Therefore, among the participants of the DV Lottery program, third-party tools are becoming more and more popular, which carry out verification according to a large number of criteria.
One of them is the "ASTAR Photo-validator" program, which, although it belongs to paid (the cost is 300 rubles), allows you to download itself for free and perform the first 3 checks.
A free site for checking photos on a green card is also popular. On its start page, select "Upload a photo".
All technical criteria are checked immediately. If everything is fine with them, click "Go ..."
Next, we check if the eyes are in the red zone in the picture. If even the edge of one of them goes out of bounds, the picture will have to be cropped again. If everything is in order, click "Yes".
In the next step, we check the proportions. To do this, you need to align the top green line with the extreme point of your hairstyle and check if the chin falls into the bottom green line. If it is higher or lower, you will have to crop the picture again. If everything is ok, click "Yes" and go to the last step.
We answer the questions and click "Finish".
If everything is in order, we will receive a message about compliance with the rules of the lottery.
If after the last step you see the inscription "Sorry, this photo will not work", then you made some mistake in the photo (and then it must be corrected) or in the answers to the test (and then you need to go through it again)
What photo will be needed in case of winning
If your application is among the winners, you will receive an invitation to an interview at the diplomatic mission of the United States of America. You will also be asked to complete an Immigrant Visa Application Form DS-230, which must be accompanied by two printed photographs.
Most of the requirements for these photographs correspond to the requirements for the one that was attached to the application for participation in the lottery.
In addition, the photograph must be printed on photographic paper (both matte and glossy are suitable), and its dimensions must be exactly 2 by 2 inches (51 × 51 mm).
Please note that if there have been significant changes in your appearance between the time of submitting an application for participation in the drawing and winning, you will have to take a new photo.
Significant changes from the point of view of US law include:
- facial trauma or surgery;
- the appearance of new piercings / tattoos or the removal of old ones;
- significant weight gain or loss;
- gender reassignment.
Changing hair color or hairstyle, growing or shaving off a beard / mustache is not considered a significant change in appearance, so there is no need to take a new picture in such cases.
Conclusion
A large number of requirements are put forward for the photo, which is attached to the application form for participation in the green card drawing, and violation of any of them will lead to automatic rejection of the application. Therefore, the issue of choosing and preparing a picture must be approached carefully, trusting professionals or independently studying all the nuances.
The official photo processing software on the website of the US Department of State's Visa Department will help you to correctly prepare the picture. After editing, it is worth comparing the resulting result with the official examples, and also using one of the validators.
Do not forget that if you win the drawing, the size requirements for the printed version will be added to the photo requirements.
