Michael Scheffler

Hi all,

since 4 years I use the service of AmericanDream to apply for the
Green Card Lottery. Additional they support me for Evaluation
Credentials and other related stuff to get a H1B-Visa.

Does anyone have experiences with this company? How is their quality
of work regarding the ? How is their support in the case of a win?

Sometimes I have the feeling that they are not up-to-date.

Fore this year I consider to apply by myself. Normally I would trust a
company that they prepare the application documents as needed, but now
I'm not any longer if this is the right way.

For the application of the Lottery this year are there any
requirements I've to attend when I apply by myself? Where can I get
the necessary Information to apply correct without getting the chop?

Thanks in advance to all of you for suppport

Best regards from Germany
Mike

Ivonne

Hi Mark,

this is mostly a forum from brits, but also any other nationalities. But i think, American dream is mostly known by germans since it is a german company. I don't know, if someone here has used their service, but I have heard some good things about them.

If you like to visit the forum: www.talkaboutusa.com
(i hope, I can give this link here?)

there are quite some people, who have use the service of american dream.

Ivonne

Joachim Feise

Ivonne wrote:

    > Hi Mark,
    >
    >
    >
    > this is mostly a forum from brits, but also any other nationalities.

Hmm, no. britishexpats is basically a gateway to Usenet. They just
give you a nice user interface and stuff like that, and market it to brits.

In any case, in my opinion, the GC lottery application is so easy that
there really is no reason to use a company for it.
All the instructions are available from the US State department's website:
http://travel.state.gov/
For DV 2004, the instructions were here: http://travel.state.gov/DV2004.html
In due time before the start of DV2005, they will publish the new instructions.

-Joe

Ingo Pakleppa

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 20:13:36 +0000, Ivonne wrote:

    > Hi Mark,
    >
    > this is mostly a forum from brits, but also any other nationalities.

Um, no. This is alt.visa.us, which is for anybody interested in US
immigration law. You may happen to be reading it through
britishexpats.com. This is a nice service they are offering because it
eliminates the need for you to use a news reader. But I would actually
recommend that you instead access alt.visa.us directly.

The main problem with britishexpats.com is that it "flattens" the threads,
and it is often impossible to tell who is responding to what post. It also
breaks usenet protocol in a number of other ways.

This is even more so if the posters don't quote what they are responding
to. Just look at your own post for an example. It says "Hi Mark," and then
refers to "American dream". What American dream? In order to understand
your post, you have to see Mark's, as well. In some threads with ten or
twenty responses, it becomes impossible to track (and depending on network
conditions, Mark's post may not actually show up on some servers, or may
only show up days later). Compare that with how my response, written with
a real newsreader, looks, including quoting the relevant section of your
post at the top.

For an example how the thread gets flattened, go to
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...D100%26hl%3Den

See how some of Vestalka's responses seem to be to his own original post,
even though they really are responses to my response? How do you know that
message 6 is really not a response to message 1 but to message 5?

--
Remember, I am strictly a layperson without any legal training. I encourage
everybody to seek competent legal counsel rather than relying on usenet
newsgroups.

Please support H.R. 539 and H.R. 832. More information at
http://www.kkeane.com/lobbyspousal-faq.shtml

Please visit my new FAQ at http://www.kkeane.com (always under construction)

My email address in usenet posts is now invalid for spam protection. See
my Web site for information on how to contact me.

Please feel free to enjoy some of my photographs at my new Web site
http://www.ingopakleppa.com ! Comments are welcome.

Ivonne

hi ingo and joe,

thanks for the explanation. I am not very familiar with how the internet works and what is usenet? No clue.
But you are right: I already wondered, why some threads seem messed up, the original post wasn't on top and stuff like this. Now I know why!
And I thought, this was a forum mainly from brits for brits, and others just found it and joined in.
Ivonne

Ivonne

Sorry, for my stupidity, you see, I'm not familiar: but how?
I tried www.alt.visa.us, didn't work

Ingo Pakleppa

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 11:54:11 +0000, Ivonne wrote:


    >> But I would actually
    >
    >> recommend that you instead access alt.visa.us directly.
    >
    > Sorry, for my stupidity, you see, I'm not familiar: but how?

No stupidity at all, very few people actually even know this
(unfortunately, I find newsgroups vastly more interesting than Web sites).
I heard that only 3% of Internet users even know what usenet is.

    > I tried www.alt.visa.us, didn't work

No, that's right. alt.visa.us is not a Web site but a newsgroup. I can't
go into detail (for more information, try google for "newsgroup" or
"usenet" or "newsreader" or ask your ISP for help; tell them that you were
told to use a newsreader and would like their help with setting it up) but
give you an overview. At first, usenet seems a bit intimidating, but after
a day or so, you wouldn't want to access alt.visa.us any other way.

In a few browsers, it *might* work if you simply type in:

news:alt.visa.us

Opera is one browser that should handle this.

Otherwise, you first need to install a program called a newsreader. There
are quite a few different ones. Outlook Express actually can handle
newsgroups, but I don't recommend it for a number of reasons, virus
security is one of them (I also don't recommend OE for email). Another
popular free newsreader is Forte Free Agent (go to
http://www.forteinc.com), or the paid version.

Next, you need to find out from your Internet provider what the addresses
of your news server are. Usually, it would be something like
news.myisp.net or so. You need this to set up your newsreader.

Then you tell the newsreader to download a list of all newsgroups from the
news server. That will take a while because there are well over 50,000
right now, on all kinds of topics. There are newsgroups on woodworking,
cooking, many different ones on software development, jokes, all kinds of
foreign language issues, politics, and so on. Pretty much all conceivable
topics, and many you couldn't conceive of (there even is one called
alt.barney.die.die.die) Do be forewarned, a few are offensive in nature,
but you will usually be able to tell pretty quickly.

Your newsreader will then display a list of all the newsgroups. All that
is left for you is to type in the name that you want (alt.visa.us in this
case) and then click on the subscribe button (or menu item, depending on
the newsreader).

--
Remember, I am strictly a layperson without any legal training. I encourage
everybody to seek competent legal counsel rather than relying on usenet
newsgroups.

Please support H.R. 539 and H.R. 832. More information at
http://www.kkeane.com/lobbyspousal-faq.shtml

Please visit my new FAQ at http://www.kkeane.com (always under construction)

My email address in usenet posts is now invalid for spam protection. See
my Web site for information on how to contact me.

Please feel free to enjoy some of my photographs at my new Web site
http://www.ingopakleppa.com ! Comments are welcome.

J. J. Farrell

"Ingo Pakleppa" wrote in message
news[email protected]...
    > I heard that only 3% of Internet users even know what usenet is.

You're making me feel old - that figure must have been at least 99%
when I first used the Internet!

Rete

Actually britishexpats will allow you to quote the post you are responding to. That aside, Ivonne can access the Usenet through www.google.com

Not one of the preferred methods because of the length of time it takes for your post and/or response to "show" up -- sometimes 5 hours later, it will allow you to view the thread in the sequence that Ingo was speaking of.

Rete

PS J.J. I'm as old, if not older than you are, and remember those same days. Also remember the days when instant messenging such as ICQ, etc. were not get a reality and the only chatroom I could access was by d/l MIRC.

 Tblade

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 08:02:39 GMT, "J. J. Farrell"
wrote:

    >"Ingo Pakleppa" wrote in message
    >news[email protected]...
    >> I heard that only 3% of Internet users even know what usenet is.
    >You're making me feel old - that figure must have been at least 99%
    >when I first used the Internet!
Old is relative - the "internet" as we know it today is far from what
it used to be, say 20 years ago.
I suppose when we used the net, more than 50% knew and used usenet.

there was no http protocol, and finding information involved the use
of (now) archaic tools like gopher, archie and others (i forget)...

*grin*

TBlade

Ingo Pakleppa

    > On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 08:02:39 GMT, "J. J. Farrell"
    > wrote:
    >
    >
    >>"Ingo Pakleppa" wrote in message
    >>news[email protected]...
    >>> I heard that only 3% of Internet users even know what usenet is.
    >>You're making me feel old - that figure must have been at least 99% when
    >>I first used the Internet!
    > Old is relative - the "internet" as we know it today is far from what it
    > used to be, say 20 years ago.
    > I suppose when we used the net, more than 50% knew and used usenet.
    >
    > there was no http protocol, and finding information involved the use of
    > (now) archaic tools like gopher, archie and others (i forget)...

WAIS. When I signed up for my first ISP account, they actually gave me a
floppy with tools for using gopher and wais. And I think there was an
early version of Mosaic, too.

--
Remember, I am strictly a layperson without any legal training. I encourage
everybody to seek competent legal counsel rather than relying on usenet
newsgroups.

Please support H.R. 539 and H.R. 832. More information at
http://www.kkeane.com/lobbyspousal-faq.shtml

Please visit my new FAQ at http://www.kkeane.com (always under construction)

My email address in usenet posts is now invalid for spam protection. See
my Web site for information on how to contact me.

Please feel free to enjoy some of my photographs at my new Web site
http://www.ingopakleppa.com ! Comments are welcome.