Green Card Lottery Program

Any person from any country around the world is able to enter the green card lottery,
as long as they comply with the green card requirements.

Please note that entering the green card lottery has no effect
on any other visa applications you may have.
You can apply for the USA Green Card Lottery while you are also applying
for other visas including the H1B, J, K, etc

The congressionally mandated Diversity Immigrant Visa Program
is administered on an annual basis by the Department of State and
conducted under the terms of Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Section 131 of the Immigration Act of 1990 (Pub. L. 101-649) amended INA 203
to provide for a new class of immigrants known as "diversity immigrants" (DV immigrants).
The Act makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons
from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

The annual DV program makes permanent residence visas available to
persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements.
Applicants for Diversity Visas are chosen by a computer-generated random lottery drawing.
The visas, however, are distributed among six geographic regions with a greater number of visas
going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and with no visas going to
citizens of countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the past five years.

Within each region, no one country may receive more than
seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.

For DV-2014, natives of the following countries are NOT eligible to apply
because they sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years:

BANGLADESH,
BRAZIL,
CANADA,
CHINA (mainland-born),
COLOMBIA,
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC,
ECUADOR,
EL SALVADOR,
GUATEMALA,
HAITI,
INDIA,
JAMAICA,
MEXICO,
PAKISTAN,
PHILIPPINES,
SOUTH KOREA,
UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories,
VIETNAM.

Persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible.