dv lottery

The US is proud to be country of immigrants. However, far more people are coming to the USA from certain countries than from others. In order to maintain a diversity in the population, US laws regulate immigration from particular regions of the world.

Since the early 1990s the US government has granted annually 55,000 GreenCards via the Diversity-Visa-Program (that's the official name of the annual GreenCard raffle).
The GreenCard lottery is therefore often called dv lottery and as you can see, the dv stands for "diversity visa".

Basically everybody can participate in the dv lottery. The only exceptions are persons born in a country with a very high rate of emigration into the US. One's country of citizenship is not important in the dv lottery process. What is most important is the country of your birth, in accordance with current world political maps.

The number (for example 2012) in the dv lottery program represents the American fiscal year starting on October 1st 2011 and ending end of September 2012. In the same period the winners receive their GreenCard.

The chances of winning the green card lottery (dv lottery) are pretty good. Of course you need a little luck, but in general one can say that the chances are about 1 in 25.

Links: united states immigration | permanent resident | student visa | visa lottery |