The Diversity Visa program, also as known as the green card lottery, is a program that randomly draws qualified applicants from countries with low numbers of immigrants in the previous five years and issue them with green card. The Department of State provides 55,000 Diversity Visas every fiscal year to increase the diversity of the immigrant population in the U.S..
Eligibility
- Applicants must born in countries whose natives qualify may be eligible to enter. Countries with more than 50,000 immigrants from previous fives years are not eligible. Each year the eligible countries list are slightly different. But the following countries are almost never in the list: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam. The only exception is if you can be a derivative beneficiary from a spouse or child-parent relationship of someone from the qualified country.
- Meet the education or work experience requirement. Each applicant must having either a high school education at least or two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience to perform.
Once the applicant is selected, lottery winners can process to green card application with an adjustment of status petition with USCIS or through consular processing depends on where the applicants are current residing at.
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