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DV2005 Green Card Lottery
Registration Period:
2nd Jan 2003 - 19th Oct 2003
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The Green Card Lottery

The Diversity Immigrant Visa program, also known as the Green Card Lottery, is an annual program run by the United States Department of State granting permanent residence visas to persons that meet the eligibility requirements.

The objective of the Green Card Lottery is to help the United States of America maintain its reputation as a fusion of global culture.

Applicants for the Green Card Lottery are initially chosen through a random computer-generated lottery drawing. The visas are distributed among six geographic regions with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration. All applications received will be separated into one of six geographic regions and individually numbered. After the end of the application period, a computer will randomly select cases from among all the applications received for each geographic region. Within each region, the first application randomly selected will be the first case registered, the second letter selected will be the second case registered etc.

Each year 50,000 applicants will be granted the visas (green cards). The visa will entitle you to live and work in the United States of America. You will also be permitted to bring your spouse and any unmarried children under the age of 21 to the United States of America. Once selected in the lottery, you will be notified by mail and provided with further instruction for your immigration processing.

All countries are eligible to participate except CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, 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.

To be eligible for the Green Card Lottery,

- you must be a native of a eligible country, AND
- you must possess at least a high school education or its equivalent, OR, you have 2 years of work experience, within the last 5 years, in an occupation requiring at least 2 years training or experience

If you were born in one of the ineligible countries listed above, you may still qualify to apply if you meet one of the following two
conditions:

1) If spouse was born in an eligible country, that person can claim
the spouse's country of birth under the condition that both
applicant and spouse are issued visas and enter the U.S.A at the
same time.
2) If you were born in a country of which neither parent was a
native, such person may be able to claim nativity in one of the
parents' country of birth.

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