October 2010
Immigration Law Update


Maria Kallmeyer, Grant Sovern, Lisa Duran

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 100,600 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 Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at
12 p.m. EDT until Wednesday, November 3, 2010 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 website delays. No entries will be accepted after 12 p.m. EST on November 3, 2010.

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 2011. Last year the State Department received approximately 12.1 million qualified entries, out which only 100,600 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 2012 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-2012 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-2012, available on their website. 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 /  or Lisa Duran at (602) 229-5225 / .

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-2011 diversity lottery program (Note: These applicants applied in the fall of 2009 and were selected for further processing in the late spring/early summer of 2010). 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 – 1,753 Angola – 55 Benin – 508 Botswana – 13 Burkina Faso – 183 Burundi – 72 Cameroon – 3,674 Cape Verde – 26 Central African Rep. – 18 Chad – 59 Comoros – 7 Congo – 144 Congo, The Democratic Republic of – 2,575 Côte d'Ivoire – 759 Djibouti – 45 Egypt – 4,251 Equatorial Guinea – 13	Eritrea – 851 Ethiopia – 5,200 Gabon – 41 Gambia, The – 72 Ghana – 6,002 Guinea – 701 Guinea-Bissau – 5 Kenya – 4,689 Lesotho – 11 Liberia – 1,826 Libya – 114 Madagascar – 55 Malawi – 33 Mali – 88 Mauritania – 25 Mauritius – 61 Morocco – 2,003 Mozambique – 2	Namibia – 13 Niger – 89 Nigeria – 6,000 Rwanda – 204 Senegal – 427 Seychelles - 4 Sierra Leone – 3,911 Somalia – 201 South Africa – 963 Sudan – 1,156 Swaziland – 4 Tanzania – 174 Togo – 1,011 Tunisia – 132 Uganda – 490 Zambia – 128 Zimbabwe – 163
ASIA
Afghanistan – 97 Bahrain – 15 Bangladesh – 5,999 Bhutan – 5 Burma – 367 Cambodia – 434 Hong Kong Special Admin. Region – 43 Indonesia – 205 Iran – 2,819 Iraq – 147	Israel – 129 Japan – 298 Jordan – 136 North Korea – 2 Kuwait – 88 Laos – 3 Lebanon – 214 Malaysia – 133 Maldives – 4 Mongolia – 279 Nepal – 2,189	Oman – 3 Qatar – 9 Saudi Arabia – 91 Singapore – 35 Sri Lanka – 515 Syria – 132 Taiwan – 365 Thailand – 77 United Arab Emirates – 66 Yemen – 95
EUROPE
Albania – 1,469 Armenia – 1,268 Aruba – 6 Austria – 147 Azerbaijan – 355 Belarus – 1,104 Belgium – 94 Bosnia & Herzegovina – 67 Bulgaria – 950 Croatia – 97 Cyprus – 11 Czech Republic – 111 Denmark – 66 Estonia – 72 Finland – 87 France – 767 French Polynesia – 13 French Southern & Antarctic Lands – 1 New Caledonia – 9	Georgia – 699 Germany – 1,895 Greece – 62 Greenland – 1 Hungary – 272 Iceland – 48 Ireland – 201 Italy – 450 Kazakhstan – 370 Kosovo – 134 Kyrgyzstan – 196 Latvia – 122 Liechtenstein – 1 Lithuania – 262 Luxembourg – 3 Macedonia – 263 Malta – 1 Moldova – 894 Montenegro – 5	Netherlands – 139 Netherlands Antilles – 16 Northern Ireland – 38 Norway – 66 Portugal – 61 Macau Special Admin. Region – 5 Romania – 821 Russia – 2,464 Serbia – 327 Slovakia – 125 Slovenia – 14 Spain – 219 Sweden – 187 Switzerland – 195 Tajikistan – 257 Turkey – 2,266 Turkmenistan – 135 Ukraine – 6,000 Uzbekistan – 5,091
NORTH AMERICA
Bahamas, The – 18
OCEANIA
Australia – 683 Fiji – 476 Kiribati – 9 Marshall Islands – 6 Nauru – 7	New Zealand – 333 Niue – 8 Palau – 2 Papua New Guinea – 4 Solomon Islands – 3	Tonga – 51 Tuvalu – 4 Vanuatu – 1 Western Samoa – 13
SOUTH AMERICA, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Antigua and Barbuda – 1 Argentina – 134 Barbados – 12 Belize – 12 Bolivia – 90 Chile – 63 Costa Rica – 50 Cuba – 406	Dominica – 29 Grenada – 5 Guyana – 36 Honduras – 61 Nicaragua – 74 Panama – 31 Paraguay – 14 Saint Kitts & Nevis – 6	Saint Lucia – 27 Saint Vincent and The Grenadines – 21 Suriname – 9 Trinidad and Tobago – 145 Uruguay – 23 Venezuela – 752