October 2009
Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery Now Open for Fiscal Year 2011


Maria Kallmeyer, Grant Sovern, Lisa Duran, Eric Ledbetter

Each year the U.S. Congress makes available 55,000 immigrant visas (aka, “green cards") to applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery Program. The U.S. Department of State conducts the lottery and randomly selects approximately 102,800 applicants from a pool of millions of qualified entrants. From this selected applicant pool, a maximum of 50,000 Diversity Visas are then issued during the following fiscal year. Once all the visas are issued or the fiscal year ends, the program is closed. Recipients of Diversity Visas are authorized to live and work permanently in the United States. Additionally, they are allowed to sponsor a spouse and any unmarried children under the age of 21 for lawful permanent residence in the United States along with them.

The State Department will be accepting applications for the next diversity lottery from Friday, October 2, 2009 at 12 p.m. EDT until Monday, November 30, 2009 at 12 p.m. EST. Individuals may submit only one application, which must be filed electronically at www.dvlottery.state.gov during this period. Paper entries will not be accepted. Applicants are strongly encouraged not to wait until the last week of the registration period to enter. Heavy demand may result in Web site delays. No entries will be accepted after 12 p.m. EST on November 30, 2009. All applications must be accompanied by a passport-style digital photograph of the applicant, the accompanying spouse and each unmarried child under the age of 21 (who is not a U.S. citizen). In order to qualify, an applicant must have EITHER a high school education or its equivalent 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. Each spouse in a family may submit a separate application that will cover both spouses and any dependent children.

The results of the lottery will be announced on a rolling basis in the late spring and early summer of 2010. Last year, the State Department received approximately 13.6 million qualified entries, out which only 102,600 applicants were selected. Being selected in the diversity lottery does not guarantee permanent residency status. Instead, selected applicants are merely eligible to apply for permanent residency if their assigned rank number becomes current. Even then, the selected applicant must complete an extensive application process and satisfy national security and criminal background checks. Because the number of individuals selected in the lottery far exceeds the number of actual permanent visas available, it is critical that selected applicants be prepared to act quickly upon receiving the government notification in the mail. Applications that are not submitted and approved before the 50,000 limit is reached and before the end of the 2011 fiscal year will be denied.

Individuals in F-1, J-1 or other strict nonimmigrant status who are selected in the lottery are advised to consult an immigration attorney before submitting a permanent residency application in order to assess any potential consequences to their nonimmigrant status.

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery Program was created to encourage people from countries with low immigration rates to immigrate to the U.S. Therefore, foreign nationals from countries with high levels of immigration to the United States are ineligible for the program. For the DV-2011 program, citizens from the following countries are not eligible to apply: 

Brazil	El Salvador	Pakistan
Canada	Guatemala	Philippines
People's Republic of China*	Haiti	Peru
Colombia	India	Poland
Dominican Republic	Jamaica	South Korea
Ecuador	Mexico	U.K. and its dependent territories (except Northern Ireland)
		Vietnam

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

Please see the U.S. Department of State's instructions for DV-2011, available at http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types_1318.html. For additional information, please call your local Quarles & Brady attorney or contact immigration attorneys Maria Kallmeyer at 312-715-5009 / , Grant Sovern at 608-283-2668 / , Lisa Duran at 602-229-5225 / or Eric Ledbetter at 312-715-5018 / .

Please Note: There have been instances of fraudulent websites posing as official U.S. Government sites. Some companies posing as the U.S. Government have sought money in order to “complete” lottery entry forms. There is no charge to download and complete the electronic diversity visa entry form. The Department of State notifies successful diversity visa applicants by letter and not by email.

The following is a statistical breakdown, by region and country, of the successful applicants for the DV-2010 diversity lottery program (Note: These applicants applied in the fall of 2008 and were selected for further processing in the late spring/early summer of 2009). These statistics are provided simply as a view of the last Diversity Visa lottery. Because it is a random drawing, the numbers can vary substantially from year to year.
 

AFRICA
Algeria – 1,957 Angola – 46 Benin – 369 Botswana – 23 Burkina Faso – 184 Burundi – 83 Cameroon – 3,719 Cape Verde – 6 Central African Rep. – 20 Chad – 27 Comoros – 9 Congo – 92 Congo, The Democratic Republic of – 1,817 Côte d'Ivoire – 658 Djibouti – 33 Egypt – 4,201 Equatorial Guinea – 15	Eritrea – 799 Ethiopia – 5,200 Gabon – 19 Gambia, The – 108 Ghana – 8,752 Guinea – 737 Guinea-Bissau – 8 Kenya – 4,619 Lesotho – 2 Liberia – 2,172 Libya – 152 Madagascar – 31 Malawi – 50 Mali – 129 Mauritania – 20 Mauritius – 78 Morocco – 3,124 Mozambique – 8	Namibia – 216 Niger – 56 Nigeria – 6,006 Rwanda – 178 São Tomé e Príncipe – 0 Senegal – 520 Seychelles - 4 Sierra Leone – 3,898 Somalia – 229 South Africa – 863 Sudan – 1,084 Swaziland – 11 Tanzania – 221 Togo – 827 Tunisia – 164 Uganda – 396 Zambia – 93 Zimbabwe – 170
ASIA
Afghanistan – 345 Bahrain – 15 Bangladesh – 6,001 Bhutan – 2 Burma – 473 Cambodia – 359 Hong Kong Special Admin. Region – 49 Indonesia – 277 Iran – 2,773 Iraq – 142	Israel – 99 Japan – 302 Jordan – 143 North Korea – 3 Kuwait – 70 Laos – 3 Lebanon – 181 Malaysia – 60 Maldives – 0 Mongolia – 144 Nepal – 2,132	Oman – 2 Qatar – 13 Saudi Arabia – 104 Singapore – 37 Sri Lanka – 650 Syria – 98 Thailand – 54 Taiwan – 368 United Arab Emirates – 30 Yemen – 72
EUROPE
Albania – 2,311 Andorra – 6 Armenia – 1,332 Aruba – 16 Austria – 181 Azerbaijan – 324 Belarus – 1,178 Belgium – 117 Bosnia & Herzegovina – 72 Bulgaria – 542 Croatia – 74 Cyprus – 23 Czech Republic – 116 Denmark – 75 Estonia – 66 Finland – 83 France – 703 French Guiana – 4 French Polynesia – 8	Georgia – 648 Germany – 2,188 Greece – 48 Greenland – 2 Hungary – 192 Iceland – 36 Ireland – 167 Italy – 470 Kazakhstan – 343 Kyrgyzstan – 205 Latvia – 90 Liechtenstein – 0 Lithuania – 195 Luxembourg – 2 Macau – 17 Macedonia – 272 Malta – 7 Moldova – 724	Montenegro – 13 Netherlands – 200 Netherlands Antilles – 22 Northern Ireland – 31 Norway – 60 Portugal – 51 Romania – 674 Serbia – 367 Slovakia – 108 Slovenia – 19 Spain – 169 Sweden – 163 Switzerland – 185 Tajikistan – 178 Turkey – 2,826 Turkmenistan – 108 Ukraine – 5,499 Uzbekistan – 4,059
NORTH AMERICA
Bahamas, The – 18
OCEANIA
Australia – 705 Christmas Islands – 2 Fiji – 674 Kiribati – 1	Nauru – 3 New Zealand – 258 Niue – 16 Palau – 12 Papua New Guinea – 15	Solomon Islands – 3 Tonga – 80 Tuvalu – 1 Vanuatu – 7 Western Samoa – 26
SOUTH AMERICA, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Antigua and Barbuda – 9 Argentina – 188 Barbados – 29 Belize – 10 Bolivia – 142 Chile – 53 Costa Rica – 74 Cuba – 298	Dominica – 18 Grenada – 9 Guyana – 41 Honduras – 82 Nicaragua – 50 Panama – 39 Paraguay -- 29	Saint Kitts & Nevis – 6 Saint Lucia – 19 Saint Vincent and The Grenadines – 9 Suriname – 10 Trinidad and Tobago – 226 Uruguay – 17 Venezuela – 624