Talk:Diversity Immigrant Visa

Reference

I can't edit the article, but the "citation needed" about the statistics can be found at http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_5712.html for 2012 and at http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/bulletin/bulletin_1770.html for previous years — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.117.9.173 (talk) 21:46, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Expansion

The H.R. 4437 section is too short and did not present view from all sides. I'm not knowledgable on the HR-4437 so, I'm not sure how to expand it. If you're someone who knows more about this issue please expand this section.

Also, there's seems to be some companies out there that you can pay so they would enter you every year for a certain fee. And since the visa is free to register, wouldn't this be a fraud of some sort?

Danke Feureau 15:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Redirects

Shouldn't there be redirects from "Green Card Lottery" and "Diversity Visa Lottery" to this page?

Agreed, Done, Why didn't you just do it? Dainamo 12:37, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hello. I have a Diversity Visa. I did apply via an "agency", who did take a fee. This was in 1999. However the fee is to make sure that the application is sent to the correct processing center, during the short application period. I don't think what the "agencies" do is illegal. However, I would say that they do occupy an "ethically grey" area, because the agency I worked with never indicated that the application process is free. I hope this helps. AndrewItalic textbbbbbb

USCIS Warns of Impostor Websites

There are fraudulent organisations claiming to offer Green Card Lottery services. Such organisations are not sponsored by US Government and should not be referenced as recommended. There is evidence that the "services" do list themselves as offering such sevice to benefit from. USCIS Warns of Impostor Websites

The USCIS reminds the public that only Websites ending with the ".gov" suffix are official government Websites. The Web address of the official USCIS Website is www.uscis.gov.

Many other non-governmental Websites (e.g., using the suffixes ".com," ".org" or ".net") provide legitimate and useful immigration-related information and services. Regardless of the content of other Websites, USCIS does not endorse, recommend or sponsor any information or material posted at any other Website besides this one.

Furthermore, a few other non-government Websites may try to mislead customers and members of the public into thinking they are official USCIS Government Websites. These Websites may attempt to charge you for services such as for USCIS forms that are free on the USCIS or another government Website. They may also charge you for services that you may never receive. They also do not have access to official USCIS.gov immigration job application information or to official Department of Homeland Security job listings on USAJOBS.GOV, so be wary of sending any personal or biographical information that might be used for identity fraud/theft to unofficial websites. All such links to Green Card services should be removed, interested might google for and use them only at own risk.

• USCIS Warns of Impostor Websites —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.88.148.8 (talk) 21:29, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Eligibility is based on birthplace not citizenship

Persons are allocated to a jurisdiction for the purpose of the Diversity Visa lottery based on their birthplace and not their current citizenship.

In exceptional cases it is possible to claim chargeability to the place a parent was born. Additionally, if one's spouse is selected in the lottery, one can receive a visa on this basis.

JAJ 04:02, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Non-Sovereign Jurisdictions

Most DV jurisdictions are sovereign countries. There are at least four exceptions where those born in one part of a country are treated differently to the majority from that country. These are:

• Northern Ireland (UK)
• Hong Kong SAR (China)
• Macao SAR (China)
• Taiwan (China). US recognises PRC as the sole government of China, however Taiwan is maintained as a separate jurisdiction for the visa lottery.
• Persons born in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang, and Tibet are chargeable to the limitation for China-mainland.
• Persons born in the areas administered prior to June 1967 by Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Syria are chargeable, respectively, to the foreign state limitation for Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria.
• For the purpose of the Diversity Immigrant category only, Northern Ireland is treated as a separate visa chargeability per INA 203(c); the symbol for Northern Ireland is NIRE.
• Treated as a separate chargeability area per sec. 103 of the Immigration Act of 1990.
• Persons born in Junagadh and that portion of Jammu and Kashmir controlled by India are chargeable to the foreign state limitation for India. Persons born in that portion of Jammu and Kashmir controlled by Pakistan are chargeable to the foreign state limitation for Pakistan.
• Persons born in the Habomai Islands, Shikotan, Kunashiri, Etorofu, and Southern Sakhalin are chargeable to the foreign state limitation for Japan.
• In November 1986 three of the four political components which made up the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands assumed new status and are no longer subject to the Trusteeship agreement. The Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia are now sovereign, selfgoverning states in free association with the United States; as such, each has become a separate chargeability for immigrant visa purposes. The Northern Marianas is now a Commonwealth in political union with the United States, and thus a U.S. territory; therefore, it is not a chargeability for immigrant visa purposes. The Trusteeship agreement remains in effect for Palau, however, immigrant visa applicants born in Palau continue to be properly chargeable to the limitation of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.
• Madeira and the Azores are included as integral parts of Portugal.
• The Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, and the following areas of Spanish sovereignty in North Africa - Ceuta, Islas Chafarinas, Melilla, Penon de Alhucemas and Penon de Velez de la Gomera - are considered as integral parts of Spain.
• The Macau Policy Act (incorporated and enacted as Title II of Public Law 106-570) provides that the laws of the United States shall apply to Macau in the same manner as before December 20, 1999. Consequently, Macau immigrant visa numbers are chargeable to Portugal.

Some countries have dependent areas:

• AUSTRALIA:
  • Christmas Island CHRI
  • Cocos (Keeling) Islands COCI
• DENMARK:
  • Greenland GRLD
• FRANCE:
  • French Guiana FRGN
  • French Polynesia FPOL
  • French Southern and Antarctic Lands FSAT
  • Guadeloupe 1 GUAD
  • Martinique MART
  • New Caledonia NCAL
  • Reunion REUN
  • St. Pierre and Miquelon SPMI
  • Wallis and Futuna WAFT
• GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND:
  • Anguilla ANGU
  • Bermuda BERM
  • British Virgin Islands BRVI
  • Cayman Islands CAYI
  • Falkland Islands FKLI
  • Gibraltar GIB
  • Montserrat MONT
  • Pitcairn PITC
  • St. Helena SHEL
  • Turks and Caicos Islands TCIS
• NETHERLANDS:
  • Aruba ARB
  • Netherlands Antilles1 NETA
• NEW ZEALAND:
  • Cook Islands CKIS
  • Niue NIUE
• PORTUGAL:
  • Macau MAC
• SPAIN:
  • Western Sahara SSAH

Because the DV eligibility criteria are based on birthplace, citizenship is irrelevant, except a special case when a person was born in US and does not US citizenship.

JAJ 04:30, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Scams

Maybe a paragraph should be added noting the fact that entry is free of charge and is done electronically, and that third parties exploit ignorance of this fact and demand fees for the "service."

Estr4ng3d 15:56, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Did anyone ever consider the fact that these sites can be helpful to applicatants, who may have questions. I don't think people have to pay the fee for the application, its for making sure the application is correct. I think there should be a paragraph about that.

December 2005: Green Card Lottery Abolished

Needs citation. F15x28 06:27, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Done. http://www.house.gov/herseth/press_12172005_visa.html

Thanks! By the way, don't you think Bush is using terrorism as an excuse for everything? Scaring people to vote him for a second term, monitoring credit card use by international students, tapping into the privacy of all US citizens alike, attacking Saddam, stealing oil from Iraq,... and now cutting off sources of diveristy in the US? F15x28 03:00, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it was Congressman Goodlatte who thought up abolishing the lottery, not Bush. BGManofID

I proudly came to the U.S. through the Diversity Immigrant Visa. To abolish it would be a joke... the U.S. doesn't want to accept 50,000 LEGAL immigrants, who are documented and checked by the government, while millions of illegal immigrants are pouring through the borders. Haha, what a joke. Noamokun

Let's place this in perspective. It would take the diversity program 20 years to bring in 1 million immigrants. At the same time, millions of illegal immigrants have flooded the U.S. over the last few years. The diversity program should be a non-issue. Noamokun

Foreign-Language Links

Does anyone think it makes sense to keep a link there to a website that is in Byelorussian only (save.greencard.by)? Besides, I don't see the point of a website that apparently aims to influence US policymaking and does not provide an English translation...

I agree and removed the link --84.191.168.243 20:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Legit services

There are several reputable companies providing paid value added services to green card lottery applicants such as http://www.usafis.com/ or http://www.usofficial.org offering 365 days a year service; Free airline ticket to winners to come to the USA; acceptance of photos by regular mail, email and uploading; photos update anytime; extensive winners notification by regular mail, phone, email and fax multiple times; contact details update; multiple years submission; online support to questions by experts and comprehensive instructions in multiple languages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aviregev (talk • contribs) 05:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC).

The BURDEN OF PROOF

Here is Johny:

If you are selected to apply for a DV visa, you will be required, before you are issued a visa, to provide evidence that you will not become a public charge in the United States.

Unless you have unlimited financial resources and are able to document that you'll support yourself without the proficeiency in English, DV Visa will not be granted to you.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA), also known as the McCarran-Walter Act: The Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA, was created in 1952. Before the INA, a variety of statutes governed immigration law but were not organized in one location. The McCarran-Walter bill of 1952, Public Law No. 82-414, collected and codified many existing provisions and reorganized the structure of immigration law. The Act has been amended many times over the years, but is still the basic body of immigration law. The INA is divided into titles, chapters, and sections. Although it stands alone as a body of law, the Act is also contained in the United States Code (U.S.C.). The code is a collection of all the laws of the United States. It is arranged in fifty subject titles by general alphabetic order. Title 8 of the U.S. Code is but one of the fifty titles and deals with "Aliens and Nationality". When browsing the INA or other statutes you will often see reference to the U.S. Code citation. For example, Section 208 of the INA deals with asylum, and is also contained in 8 U.S.C. 1158. Although it is correct to refer to a specific section by either its INA citation or its U.S. code, the INA citation is more commonly used. "DO DV APPLICANTS RECEIVE WAIVERS OF ANY GROUNDS OF VISA INELIGIBILITY OR RECEIVE SPECIAL PROCESSING FOR A WAIVER APPLICATION? Applicants are subject to all grounds of ineligibility for immigrant visas specified in the Immigration and Nationality Act. There are no special provisions for the waiver of any ground of visa ineligibility aside from those ordinarily provided in the Act, nor is there special processing for waiver requests. Some general waiver provisions for people with close relatives who are American Citizens or Lawful Permanent Resident aliens may be available to DV applicants as well, but the time constraints in the DV program will make it difficult for applicants to benefit from such provisions. Applicants who obtain a DV visa are not provided any type of assistance such as airfare, housing assistance, or subsidies. If you are selected to apply for a DV visa, you will be required, before you are issued a visa, to provide evidence that you will not become a public charge in the United States. This evidence may be in the form of a combination of your personal assets, an Affidavit of Support (Form I-134) from a relative or friend residing in the United States, and/or an offer of employment from an employer in the United States."

Contradiction in ineligible list

Poland is given as ineligible, however in subsection "Changes" it is said that in 2002 Poland was removed from the list of ineligible countries. Which information is right? MikeZ 15:50, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Poland was ineligible before 2002, but became eligible after immigration from Poland fell in the late 1990s. However, as immigration rose again, Poland was put back on the ineligible list for DV-2007. Somebody removed my stating that, so I fixed it again. BGManofID 17:43, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Criticism of the DV Lottery System Sources/References

No sources or references given to back up these claims. --IIIWitnessIII 13:21, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

That's the first time I've heard about the problem with rejecting people with the same name, and I doubt that's true. You would have to be really stupid to assume that two people can't have the same name and design a system with such a flaw (not to mention no one seemed to notice this before this Wikipedia guy). --pet5

Immigration Portal Website external link

"FREE Great Blog/Forum with very accurate and knowledgeable bloggers from all over the world to provide you with the answers for DV lottery questions. Mostly for Selected Win"

This is obviously not suitable for this article, but I don't know this particular site, would someone who does look over it and maybe remove the link? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.235.18.197 (talk) 19:55, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Floating Question

"All Asians together is 5% of the US population. By favoring the US Irish majority, what diversity is this program promoting?" As well written and intriguing as that sentence is, are questions acceptable in a source of information?

• The US has an Irish majority? I don't think so. I believe that "diversity" in the program refers to the mix of the number of immigrants from each nation per year. Asian nations make up a far greater number of immigrants in recent years than those from Ireland or the other eligible European nations. Asian immigration will far exceed Irish immigration, don't worry about that. And if you're implying that Asian nations are shut out, see that Japan, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mongolia, and more, are eligible for the program. --Bridgecross 17:00, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

hello people... i've been chosen for the dv visa of the year 2009 with the case no. 2009AS00013xxx what are my chances?75.172.159.75 (talk) 19:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Chance of actually winning a visa?

Suggestion: Some statistics would help give a sense of scale, for example:

• Less than 1% of people who enter the lottery actually win a greencard. about.com
• The 50k lottery greencards represent 5% of the yearly legal Immigration to the United States#Demography —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hamster128 (talk • contribs) 14:19, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

just to know, being part of a european communist party makes you ineligible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.116.197.246 (talk) 21:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

The Table for chances of winning by region is incorrect. For example, using the DV2010 data for regional allocation (source the travel.state.gov website), it says that Africa was allocated 52.63% of the visas. This means 26,315 out of 50,000 available visas. The wikipedia table says that in DV2010, Africa has chance of winning of 2.19%. This means that 26,315 out of <total number of applicants charging Africa> = 2.19%, this would mean the number of Africa applicants is 1,201,598. Doing this for all the regions, gives a total number of only 3.1million applicants. We know that in DV-2010 there were at least 13.6 million!! (source travel.state.gov website). This means that the chances of winning per region is actually less than the number given in the tables, by at least a factor of 4.3 (ie instead of 2.19% Africa, it would be 0.51%). I wonder why nobody has verified the math or source for this data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.204.193.30 (talk) 14:59, 15 June 2011 (UTC) You can find more information about lottery in USA in http://usagreencard.hpage.asia.

You made some incorrect assumptions. In DV-2010, Africa was allocated 52.63% of the lottery winners, not visas. The total number of winners was 102,610, and 54,003 of those were from Africa (54003/102610=0.5263). The total number of applicants from Africa was 5,105,274, but this includes 1,565,933 spouses and children; the number of entries was 3,539,341. The winning chance is the number of winners divided by the number of entries: 54003/3539341=0.0153, or 1.53%. Sources: [1], [2].

However, the table in the article calculates the winning chances using the number of legitimate entries, which can be considerably lower. To arrive at a winning chance of 2.19%, about 30% of the entries would have to be illegitimate. The only problem is that I cannot find any source for the number of illegitimate entries per country. The person who added these numbers to the article should also add such a source. Heitordp (talk) 23:55, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

May I ask a questions, 50,000 visa is 50,000 winners only, or 50,000 winners + spouse + dependent? For example, assume every winners with a spouse, and two children, 50,000 visa is total 12,500 winners x 4 = 50,000 people, or 50,000 winners x 4 = 200,000 people come to USA every year? Thank you! Immigrants (talk) 14:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Expected changes to DV-2013 and map

I added the expected changes to DV-2013, but AlexanderRa removed them. I did not use statistics for the DV-2010 as he suggests, I used the actual immigration data for the previous five years (2006 to 2010), and found which countries had more than 50,000 immigrants to the US during that period. It is a simple calculation and I added the reference for verification. I agree that we could wait until the list of eligible countries is officially released, but my conclusion is not speculation.

I also made changes to the map according to the notes and references that BGManoflD added to the image page. Specifically, I changed the color of Southern Sakhalin and Mexico, while Macau was already colored as Portugal, and I removed the respective notes on the text since the map already reflected them. I had added a reference to the US immigration law that clearly states that Mexico is not considered part of North America for the DV program, and it is grouped with Central and South America. AlexanderRa reverted all my changes and added a reference to the instructions for the DV-2012, which by the way also list Mexico under Central and South America. My changes are not vandalism as he suggests, I am trying to correct the information shown and I always added references for verification. Heitordp (talk) 12:43, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 174.117.248.144, 11 September 2011

Many people who have a legal status and already adopted in routine of life USA and follows Law rules trying to get a Green card in DV lottery, but can't. Why DV lottery choosing winners from abroad? They are also from foreign countries. They live in limited time in here.

I know many situations who won Green card Lottery, they come and didn’t fit anywhere even they had many benefits/example: Link card, education Financial AID, health insurance…/. So they left around from 9-12 months back to home country. In same time who really wants to legally work and live in the USA couldn’t have any chance to get Green card?

It is not a secret for everyone. Everyone who came to this country illegally or legally working for living, most of them having a good job experience and skills, good English, high and good education. But can’t raise their career, because don’t have a Green card. In this economic crisis time nobody wants to be their employment sponsor to get some legal documents. In my opinion DV lottery program should review all applications after selections. Some winners even didn’t have any educations or real skills.

Online registration dates

Year	Start	Conclusion
DV-2014	Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 12:00 noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4)	Saturday, November 3, 2012 at 12:00 noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4)
DV-2013	Tuesday, October 4, 2011, at 12:00 noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4)	Saturday, November 5, 2011, at 12:00 noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4)

Edit request on 6 May 2013

tHE PROGRAM NO LONGER EXISTS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.218.206.51 (talk) 19:39, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Do you have a source for this? Is there not going to be a 2015 version with applications starting in Oct 2013?--Lgriot (talk) 15:46, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 April 2014

Powerhandboy (talk) 17:03, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

• Exactly what edit do you intend to make? - Mike Rosoft (talk) 17:13, 20 April 2014 (UTC)