Registration for the Annual Green Card Lottery Opens October 7, 2020

The online registration period for the annual green card lottery will begin tomorrow, Wednesday, October 7, at 12 noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT–4), and end on Tuesday, November 10 at 12 noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT–5). 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 annual green card lottery, which is formally known as the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (“DV”), provides 50,000 immigrant visas each year to six geographic regions. 

Requirements for the Green Card Lottery

In order to qualify, you must be born in an eligible country (see list of ineligible countries below).  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 countries of birth only if neither of them were legal residents in the country of your birth when you were born.  

The other requirements are 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 requires such experience for job performance.  You also must have a valid passport at the time of registration unless you are stateless or otherwise unable to obtain a passport from your home government. 

 Countries Not Eligible for Green Card Lottery this year. 

For this year’s DV lottery, individuals from the following countries are not eligible to submit an entry: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (including Hong Kong SAR), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam. Persons born in Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible. 

How to Register for the Green Card Lottery

To register for the annual green card lottery, please go to dvlottery.state.gov.  Make sure that you submit complete entries.  Please do not submit more than one entry.  There are no fees to register for the lottery.  

Those who register can check if they “won” the lottery starting May 8, 2021 through September 30, 2022. 

On average 15 million people register for the annual green card lottery.  The chances of selection are small, but there’s no fee to apply so I encourage you to submit a registration if you are interested in permanent residence in the United States.  Registering for the annual green card lottery does not suggest immigrant intent given how small the chances of selection are.  Just be sure to register on the early side of the window for registration to avoid the technical glitches that tend to happen near the end of the registration period. 

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