DIVERSITY LOTTERY

Each year, the Diversity Lottery (DV) Program makes 55,000 immigrant visas available through a lottery to people who come from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. The State Department (DOS) holds the lottery every year. Those admitted as permanent residents under this program will also be allowed to bring their spouse and any unmarried children under the age of 21 to the United States.

The annual DV program makes permanent residence visas available to persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. Applicants for Diversity Visas are chosen by a computer-generated random lottery drawing. The visas, however, are distributed among six geographic regions with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and with no visas going to citizens of countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the past five years. Within each region, no one country may receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.

For DV, natives of the following countries are not eligible to apply because they sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years:

CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, RUSSIA, SOUTH KOREA, UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and VIETNAM. Persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible.

Applicants are selected at random by computer from among all qualified entries. Those selected will be notified by mail and will be provided further instructions, including information on fees connected with immigration to the United States. Persons not selected will not receive any notification. United States embassies and consulates will not be able to provide a list of successful applicants.

All applicant must be a native of one of the countries listed under “List of Countries by Region who’s Natives Qualify”. In most cases this means the country in which the applicant was born. However, if a person was born in a country whose natives are ineligible but his/her spouse was born in a country whose natives are eligible, such person can claim the spouse’s country of birth providing both the applicant and spouse are issued visas and enter the U.S. simultaneously. If a person was born in a country whose natives are ineligible, but neither of his/her parents was born there or resided there at the time of the birth, such person may be able to claim nativity in one of the parents’ country of birth.

Applicants must have either a high school education or its equivalent, defined as successful completion of a 12-year course of elementary and secondary education or two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation requiring at least two years of training or experience to perform.