DV-2010 Green Card Lottery Opens

The annual green card lottery, DV-2010, opens today at noon eastern time.  The deadline for submission is noon, eastern time, on Monday, December 1, 2008.   Although early application does not increase the chances of being selected, we have seen in the past years the lottery site overloaded with web traffic in the last days or hours of the period so we urge early application.

The annual Diversity Visa program makes visas available to persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. A computer-generated, random lottery drawing chooses selectees for Diversity Visas. The visas are distributed among six geographic regions, with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and with no visas going to nationals of countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. over the past five years. Within each region, no single country may receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.

For DV-2010, natives of the following countries are not eligible to apply:  BRAZIL, CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, ECUADOR, EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, PERU, POLAND, SOUTH KOREA, UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and VIETNAM.

Full instructions and application form can be found on the DV-2010 website.