The Department of State (DOS) has announced that the online registration period for the annual green card lottery began Wednesday, October 5, 2022, at 12 noon, Eastern Daylight Time, and will end on Tuesday, November 8, 2022, at 12 noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST). We recommend registering as soon as possible because the DOS website does slow down or freeze due to very heavy traffic towards the end of the registration period. Last year, DOS received nearly 12 million entries for the green card lottery.

The annual green card lottery, which is formally known as the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (“DV”), provides a total of 50,000 immigrant visas to six geographic regions. However, nationals of certain countries are not allowed to apply because there already are a significant number of immigrants in the United States from these countries. For DV 2024, 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, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Republic of Korea (South Korea), United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, Venezuela, and Vietnam.  Persons born in  Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible. 

In order to register, you must be born in a DV 2024 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 countries 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 has those minimum requirements for job performance.

To register for the DV 2024 Program, go to dvprogram.state.gov. Please make sure that you submit complete entries. There are no fees to register for DV 2024. Those who register can check if they “won” the lottery starting May 6, 2023.

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