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The Diversity Immigrant Visa program is a United States congressionally mandated lottery program for receiving a United States Permanent Resident Card. It is also known as the Green Card Lottery. The lottery is administered on an annual basis by the Department of State and conducted under the terms of Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Section 131 of the Immigration Act of 1990 (Pub. L. 101-649) amended INA 203 to provide for a new class of immigrants known as "diversity immigrants" (DV immigrants). The Act makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

[edit] Ineligible countries

Those born in any territory that has sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in any of the previous five years are not eligible to receive a diversity visa. For DV-2010, natives of the following nations are ineligible: Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam ^[1]. The entry period to apply for the diversity immigrant visa (DV-2010) is October 2, 2008 through December 1, 2008.

The ineligible countries may change from year to year, and are determined by counting those countries which sent 50,000 "immigrants" (see below) in the five years including that covered by the last published immigration statistics.

[edit] Exemptions

The term 50,000 "immigrants" is partial and refers only to people who immigrated via the family-sponsored, employment, or immediate relatives of U.S. citizen categories, and does not include other categories such as refugees, asylum seekers, NACARA beneficiaries, or previous diversity immigrants. It is for this reason that Cuba, Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Bangladesh are not on the ineligible list despite sending over 50,000 immigrants in the previous five years. ^[2]

[edit] Changes

The first program was DV-1995, and the following 13 countries were ineligible from the start: Canada, China (mainland and Taiwan), Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam.

Changes to the ineligible list over the years include the following:

• DV-1996: Colombia now ineligible.
• DV-1998: Poland now ineligible.
• DV-2002: Poland and Taiwan now eligible, Pakistan ineligible.
• DV-2004: The new country East Timor now eligible.
• DV-2005: Russia now ineligible.
• DV-2007: Poland again ineligible.
• DV-2008: Brazil and Peru now ineligible.
• DV-2009: Ecuador and Guatemala now ineligible.
• DV-2010: Russia and the new country Kosovo now eligible. (There are no other country list changes.)

The large number of changes for DV-2002 was due to a three-year gap between the publication of the 1998 and 1999 immigration statistics. In other words, DV-2001 was still using the statistics from the five-year period from 1994 to 1998 to determine country eligibility. As immigration has increased, the number of ineligible countries has risen, from 13 for DV-1995 to 19 now. Taiwan is the only country which was ineligible in 1995 but eligible now due to decreasing immigration.

Starting with the DV-2008, several questions and options for answers have been added. Applicants are now required to provide information, such as the country where they currently live and their highest level of education achieved, in the Electronic Diversity Visa Entry Form (E-DV Entry Form).

Russia fell below the ineligibility limit for DV-2010 [1] due to a combination of a sharp dropoff in adoptions (from 5,878 in 2004 to 2,301 in 2007) and the unusual bureaucratic quirk of large numbers of Russian immigrants being allocated to "Soviet Union (former)" rather than Russia in 2006 and 2007.

[edit] Distribution and lottery process

The visas are distributed on a regional and national basis, with each region sending fewer immigrants to the US in the previous 5 years receiving more diversity visas. Currently, Africa and Europe receive about 80% of the visas in the lottery.^[3] In order to allow for those who do not pursue immigrant visas, more 'winners' are selected in the lottery than there are visas available. Hence being selected from the lottery does not guarantee an immigrant visa to the U.S. To receive a Diversity Visa and immigrate to the United States 'winners' must meet all eligibility requirements under U.S. law. Requirements include at least a high school diploma, or its equivalent, or two years of work experience in an occupation requiring at least two years training. Individuals from among all qualified entries will be notified by mail between May and July 2008 for the DV-2009.

DV-2010 started on October 2, 2008 and ended on December 1, 2008.

[edit] Legal status

In December 2005, the United States House of Representatives voted 273-148 to add an amendment to the border enforcement bill H.R. 4437 abolishing the DIV. Opponents of the lottery said it was susceptible to fraud and was a way for terrorists to enter the country. The Senate never passed the bill.

In March 2007, Congressman Bob Goodlatte introduced H.R. 1430, which would eliminate the diversity visa program.

In June 2007, the U.S. House passed H.R.2764 to eliminate funding for the program, and the Senate did likewise in September. ^[4] However, the final version of this bill with amendments, signed into law on December 26, 2007, did not include the removal of funds for the program. ^[5]

Several attempts have been made over the last several years to kill the lottery. Although H.R.2764 was an appropriation bill and could only cut funds for the lottery during one fiscal year, this was the first time that both the House and the Senate passed a bill to halt the diversity visa program.

The following bills in 110th Congress still open, mainly are introduced, related to DV: H.R.750, H.R.1430, H.R.1645, H.R.3064, H.R.3371, H.R.4065, H.R.4192, H.R.5921, H.R.6090, S.1350, S.2868, S.3084

[edit] Green card lottery assistants

There are several Organizations who claim to help people in the process of the lottery. The most notorious of which is the USAFIS.ORG website , which belongs to a private company in Israel (DSNR.net). It should be noted that they are not affiliated with the U.S State Department in any way.

The US State Department has warned against using these websites :

Please note: There have been instances of fraudulent websites posing as official U.S. Government sites. Some companies posing as the U.S. Government have sought money in order to "complete" lottery entry forms. There is no charge to download and complete the Electronic Diversity Visa Entry Form. The Department of State notifies successful Diversity Visa applicants by letter, and NOT by electronic mail. To learn more, see the Department of State Warning and the Federal Trade Commission Warning in the Related Links section of this page.

[edit] Recent developments

Over 6.4 million applications for the 2008 Diversity Visa Lottery were submitted — an increase of 0.9 million from the 5.5 million applications submitted in the 2007 Diversity Visa Lottery. Taking into account dependents, there were more than 10 million participants in the 2008 Diversity Visa Lottery.^[6]

[edit] Criticism of the DV Lottery System

Currently, there is no means by which an applicant can check the status of an application online. Only those selected in the lottery are notified, by mail. This is a considerable drawback in the procedures in countries where surface mail may be censored by authorities.

However, starting with DV 2010 the applicant receives a confirmation number after a successful application is submitted which can be used to check the application status online between July 2009 and June 2010. This was a long awaited feature since many postal services in developing or politically unstable countries are either not effective or not trustworthy.

Nevertheless, since entries for the diversity lottery must now be submitted online, potential applicants are routinely unable to submit their applications due to page load errors. It is possible that the system's servers are not equipped to deal with the millions of submissions that are attempted during the established two month application period. The percentage of individuals who attempt to apply for the diversity visa but are unable to due to page load errors is currently unknown.

There have been some reports that the DV Lottery application site does not work well with Firefox, but no such reports about Internet Explorer usage.