The Diversity Visa Lottery
The United States has a Diversity Immigrant Visa ("Green Card") Lottery Program which makes available 50,000 immigration visas each year to be distributed among six geographic regions of the world.To be eligible, you must have been born in a qualifying country. For the current lottery, all countries qualified except the following"high admission" countries (those which send more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. each year). The INELIGIBLE countries are:
Canada
China (mainland)
Colombia
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Haiti
India
Jamaica
Mexico
Pakistan
Philippines
Russia
South Korea
United Kingdom
Vietnam
Persons born in Taiwan, Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR and Northern Ireland ARE eligible
to apply.
The lottery filing period usually lasts 30 days and takes place late in
the calendar year. For more information, go tothe website of the
U.S.State
Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs.