Published on 08/03/2016
Hello, I’m Vaughan de Kirby. As you may know I’m an investment immigration attorney based here in San Francisco. Today we’re going a little off-topic, but it’s something that comes up often in questions, and I thought you would be interested to learn a little about it.
It’s called, generally in the market place, the Green Card lottery, but actually its proper name is the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. Basically this program was enacted to balance out the immigration to the United States from various countries. Any country that has more than 50,000 immigrants during the last five years does not qualify. And that includes many of the clients from countries that we work with, such as India and China. Accompanying this video would be a complete list of the countries that do not qualify under the visa lottery program.
The other is the qualification, and only Congress could write a law like this. Number One is a high school diploma, or you have worked two years of the last five years in a position that requires two years of training.
Now one very important factor I want to alert you to is fraud. There’re sites online that claim that they can enter you into the visa lottery. They’re all fraudulent. This can only be done online with the USCIS website. And it is done during the month of October, and the results are available in May. Now as I said earlier, 50,000 applicants are granted, however they actually grant 100,000. So if you’re notified that you’ve been approved for the visa lottery, that is only the first step. You must go forward and show that you have the qualification required. The very important message to people from those countries that can apply for this program is to only apply online in October on the official site of USCIS. Don’t let anyone or any site online tell you there’s any other way to apply.
I hope this is helpful and answers a few questions on the visa lottery. Please feel free to contact us at 415-221-2345.
