Sunday, December 2, 2018




WHAT IS THE DIVERSITY GREEN CARD LOTTERY?

By Susanna Bogue, Esq.

The Diversity Visa green card Lottery was sponsored by the late Senator Edward Kennedy and is now conducted each autumn. The application period for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 just ended last month.

Although President Trump has constantly criticized the green card lottery and has supported legislation to eliminate the program, the only way to end it would be for Congress to change the Kennedy-era law. In August 2017 President Trump said that “for decades” our legal immigration system has been and is a ‘low-skilled immigration system … issuing record number of green cards to low wage immigrants, … which is not fair to our people.” President Trump must not be seeing the same signs I’m seeing; all across this nation “help wanted” signs appear in every industry and every occupation. The Senate bill he supported which would have done away with the lottery was not passed.

As President Trump correctly pointed out, for more than 20 years the US government has given out 50,000 green cards in a lottery to people from “underrepresented” countries, including Ireland and Northern Ireland (but not the rest of the UK). But don’t think for a minute that the Irish get anywhere near 50,000, for many years now the numbers have hovered consistently around 100 winners. Last year there were 14.3 million (under the record 14.7m in 2012) qualified entries down from 14.6m a year ago. Over 87,000 applicants were randomly selected from the registrations for the 50,000 green cards. Only 60 Irish born applicants (52 southerners and only 8 northerners – less than half last’s year’s 139!) were notified that they had been selected. Tiny Fiji got 396 and Australia got 777. Poland got 461, Venezuela 1,282, and Israel 214. The “big” winners who got over 3,000 were Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Nepal, Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, so that’s 31,186 of the winning letters issued to just eight countries (and they call this the “diversity” lottery!). In Europe, in addition to the countries named above, the big winners were Albania with 2,503 and Turkey with 2,411.

This year’s lottery DV-2020 was very similar to last year’s with no changes in the eligibility requirements. The UK (except for those born in Northern Ireland), Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and Vietnam are among the countries which were not eligible to apply unless they fall into one of the limited exceptions. When nationals of a country take up too many green cards in the proceeding years, they are disqualified from entering the annual lottery. 

If you submitted an application this year,  a notice of receipt will be issued with a confirmation number and starting May 7, 2019 through at least September 30, 2020, you will be able to check to see if you were chosen by going to Entrance Status Check at www.dvlottery.state.gov/ESC/.  If you’ve misplaced your DV lottery confirmation number, you may be able to use the retrieval tool in Entrant Status Check to recover it if you know which email you used to register. Check again in September 2019 as more numbers may be chosen. If you applied last year and have your confirmation number you can check again to see if you won or not as more numbers may have been chosen on October 1st.  Note that there is only ONE submission per person and each submission has a confirmation number. Married couples should both apply separately for two chances. If your spouse is born in New Zealand or Australia don’t apply under Ireland as your odds are much better using countries down under! Winning letters will NOT be mailed and you will need your confirmation number that you get when you apply to see if you have won. Green card interviews begin October 1, 2019 and everyone who is selected must be processed prior to September 30, 2020. Two years ago the green cards were gone by September 12th.

If you are selected…
Consult an attorney to give yourself the best odds. Being selected as a winner does not guarantee you a green card.  Past immigration violations such as “unlawful presence” or “misrepresentations” can lead to a denial at the interview. For those who apply, good luck, and hope if you win you really win!


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