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Each year the U.S. Congress makes available approximately 50,000 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 100,000 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 4, 2011 at 12 p.m. EDT until Saturday, November 5, 2011 at 12 p.m. EDT. 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. EDT on November 5, 2011.

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 2012. Last year the State Department received approximately 14.7 million qualified entries, out of which only 100,021 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 2013 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-2013 program, citizens from the following countries are not eligible to apply:

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

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

Please see the U.S. Department of State's instructions for DV-2013, 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 / [email protected], Grant Sovern at (608) 283-2668 / [email protected] or Lisa Duran at (602) 229-5225 / [email protected].

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-2012 diversity lottery program (Note: These applicants applied in the fall of 2010 and were selected for further processing in the late spring/early summer of 2011). 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 - 1,799 Angola - 42 Benin - 511 Botswana - 7 Burkina Faso - 226 Burundi - 56 Cameroon - 3,374 Cape Verde - 9 Central African Rep. - 3 Chad - 33 Comoros - 9 Congo - 105 Congo, The Democratic Republic of - 3,445 Côte d'Ivoire - 553 Djibouti - 38  Egypt - 4,664 Equatorial Guinea - 4	Eritrea - 670 Ethiopia - 4,902 Gabon - 48 Gambia, The - 113 Ghana - 5,832 Guinea - 899 Guinea-Bissau - 3 Kenya - 4,720 Lesotho - 8 Liberia - 2,101 Libya - 136 Madagascar - 17 Malawi - 16 Mali - 76 Mauritania - 29 Mauritius - 59 Morocco - 1,890 Mozambique - 13	Namibia - 10 Niger - 32 Nigeria - 6,024 Rwanda - 333 Senegal - 270 Seychelles - 6 Sierra Leone - 3,397 Somalia - 175 South Africa - 833 Sudan - 757 Tanzania - 175 Togo - 845 Tunisia - 113 Uganda - 418 Zambia - 79 Zimbabwe - 123
ASIA
Afghanistan - 109 Bahrain - 29 Bangladesh - 2,373 Bhutan - 5 Burma - 370 Cambodia - 596 Hong Kong Special Admin. Region - 54 Indonesia - 256 Iran - 4,453 Iraq - 153	Israel - 175 Japan - 435 Jordan - 152  Kuwait - 108 Laos - 1 Lebanon - 274 Malaysia - 118  Mongolia - 209 Nepal - 3,258 Oman - 11	Qatar - 19 Saudi Arabia - 217 Singapore - 45 Sri Lanka - 708 Syria - 160 Taiwan - 391 Thailand - 73 Timor-Leste - 9 United Arab Emirates - 92 Yemen - 149
EUROPE
Albania - 1,508 Andorra - 1 Armenia - 998 Aruba - 4 Austria - 130 Azerbaijan - 304 Belarus - 493 Belgium - 105 Bosnia & Herzegovina - 83 Bulgaria - 883 Croatia - 107 Curacao - 19 Cyprus - 26 Czech Republic - 104 Denmark - 73 Estonia - 49 Finland - 91 France - 574 French Polynesia - 7 New Caledonia - 1	Georgia - 620 Germany - 1,709 Greece - 105  Hungary - 325 Iceland - 56 Ireland - 213 Italy - 529 Kazakhstan - 434 Kosovo - 137 Kyrgyzstan - 321 Latvia - 83 Lithuania - 258 Luxembourg - 8 Macedonia - 160 Malta - 20  Moldova - 1,238 Monaco - 3 Montenegro - 18 Netherlands - 149  Netherlands Antilles - 16	Northern Ireland - 59 Norway - 84 Portugal - 66 Macau Special Admin. Region - 19 Romania - 1,327 Russia - 2,353 San Marino - 1 Serbia - 298 Slovakia - 80 Slovenia - 16 Spain - 232 St. Maarten - 2  Sweden - 200 Switzerland - 229 Tajikistan - 270 Turkey - 3,077 Turkmenistan - 143 Ukraine - 5,799 Uzbekistan - 4,800
NORTH AMERICA
Bahamas, The - 15
OCEANIA
Australia - 900 Christmas Island - 3 Cocos Islands - 1 Fiji - 628 Kiribati - 14 Marshall Islands - 4	Micronesia, Federated States of - 2 Nauru - 5 New Zealand - 309 Cook Islands - 6  Niue - 14	Palau - 5 Tonga - 93 Vanuatu - 8 Western Samoa - 9
SOUTH AMERICA, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Antigua and Barbuda - 9 Argentina - 101 Barbados - 25 Belize - 9 Bolivia - 84 Chile - 43 Costa Rica - 43 Cuba - 292	Dominica - 18 Grenada - 24 Guyana - 26 Honduras - 80 Nicaragua - 49 Panama - 21 Paraguay - 17 Saint Kitts & Nevis - 7	Saint Lucia - 4 Saint Vincent and The Grenadines - 16 Suriname - 15 Trinidad and Tobago - 175 Uruguay - 19 Venezuela - 925