In 2011 and 2013 we made two trips to the USA : on the East coast and on the West coast during two months.
We loved this country, the people, their mentalities, and their culture. The people were very helpful, positive, open minded, respectful and they smiled all the time.
So in 2015-2016 we decided ( with my parents and my two older brothers) to participate in the American lottery, which offer immigration cards every year, on the internet. This lottery enables people to get the green card and to be permanent residents to live in the USA. Every continent has a maximal number of candidates (some quotas) to respect. Then, we must sent a lot of information about us, and a lot of papers: identity cards, passports, graduation degrees, medical certificates… We had to have compulsory vaccinations.
The US government sent us an e-mail to tell us that we had been selected, So we had to go to Paris for a medical examination, to have x-rays and to make some blood analysis. The next week we returned to Paris to go to the American Embassy to have an interview. After that, they told us « Welcome to the United States » and they took our passports to make our visa. How exciting ! Some months after we received our visas and we had until October to go to the United States to cross the immigration. So we spent 2 weeks in September in Virginia because we wanted to live there. We had visited a lot of different cities, a lot of houses with an estate agent, and we made beautiful meetings. Then 2 days after we came back home and we received our green card from New-York. So we must go to NY to get back our green card once we arrive in the US. We mustn’t stay longer that 4 months outside the USA so we must return there in February. We have until October 2018 to move to the US. So I will not take my degree in France. In the US, there is not a degree like in France. I am going to integrate an American high-school, then a university and later, I would like to become an architect, or a designer.
Moving to the USA is a really big challenge for us because we must leave our family, our house, our friends and it is very difficult to imagine but it is also a dream and we were very lucky to be selected. Let’s go for our American Dream in 2018 then !
By Ségolène, 1L