The Department of State announced that the online registration for the annual Green Card lottery, formally referred to as the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program 2020 (DV 2020), will begin at 12 noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT–4), Wednesday, October 3, 2018, and end at 12 noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT–5), Tuesday, November 6, 2018. We recommend registering as soon as possible because the DOS website slows down or freezes due to very heavy traffic towards the end of the registration period.

The Green Card lottery provides 50,000 immigrant visas to six geographic regions.  However, for DV 2020, individuals from the following countries are not eligible to submit an entry: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, 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.

In order to register, you must be born in a DV 2020 eligible country.  If you were not born in an eligible country, you can register under your spouse’s eligible country of birth as long as your spouse is included in your submission and you both enter the United States as immigrants together. Another alternative is to register under one of your parents’ eligible country of birth only if neither of them were legal residents at the time of your birth. The other requirement is that you must have the U.S. equivalent of a high school diploma or two years of training or work experience within the past five years in an occupation that have those minimum requirements for job performance.

To register for the DV 2020 Program, go to dvlottery.state.gov.  Make sure that you submit complete entries.  There are no fees to register for DV 2020.  Those who register can check if they “won” the lottery starting May 7, 2019. 

This alert is for informational purposes only.  Please contact us if you would like to discuss this matter further.