2010 Diversity Visa Lottery Program Registration Begins
- October 2 to December 1, 2008 -
Elizabeth Espin Stern / C. Matthew Schulz
+1 202 452 7055 / +1 650 856 5528
elizabeth.e.stern@bakernet.com / matthew.schulz@bakernet.com
The United States Department of State will accept applications for the annual Diversity Visa ("DV") lottery for immigration to the US from noon, Eastern Daylight Time, Thursday, October 2 to noon, Eastern Standard Time, Monday, December 1, 2008, at http://www.dvlottery.state.gov.
The DV Lottery Program is administered annually by the Department of State. Up to 55,000 DV visas are awarded each fiscal year to persons from countries with relatively low rates of immigration to the United States. Selected applicants may apply for their US permanent residency based on the DV selection.
Applications must be submitted on the electronic DV lottery entry form at www.travel.state.gov during the registration period. Paper entries will not be accepted.
In addition, the Department of State strongly encourages applicants to apply early, as heavy demand in the latter part of the registration period may result in website delays.
The annual DV program makes permanent residence visas available to persons meeting the eligibility requirements. The eligibility requirements include that candidates must have either:
- A high school education or its equivalent, defined as successful completion of a 12-year course of elementary and secondary education; or
- Two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation requiring at least two years of training or experience to perform. The Department of Labor's O*Net Online database is used to determine the parameters of qualifying work experience.
Each applicant may submit only one application. In the case of married couples, however, each spouse may submit an individual application, provided that at least one spouse is from an eligible country for the DV 2009 lottery. Both applications are treated as separate applications, and thus enhance the chances of selection.
For DV-2010, natives of the following countries are not eligible to apply because these countries sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the US in the past five years: Brazil, Canada, China (mainland only - persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan are eligible), Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Peru, Poland, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam.
For the purposes of the DV program, applicants are generally considered "native" of the country of birth, not the country of last residency or the country of current citizenship The law does allow applicants born in any of the ineligible countries listed above the right to apply, if the spouse is a native of an eligible country. For example, a native of China married to a native of Hong Kong SAR is eligible to apply.
A computer-generated random lottery drawing chooses candidates for DV visas. The visas are distributed among six geographic regions with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration. Within each region, no one country may receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.
The complete text of the State Department press release and a link to the government's DV registration website are available at the quick link listed above.