Green Card Lottery System

What is it?
In 1990, Congress introduced a visa lottery program known as the Diversity Visa lottery, often referred to as the "green card lottery." The purpose of the program is to promote diversity in the United States by giving citizens of certain countries an opportunity to get permanent resident (immigrant) visas, or green cards.

The green card lottery is an incentive program designed to attract immigrants from particular countries to balance out the U.S. population. The countries that qualify are "underrepresented" countries. According to the Immigration Act of 1990, an underrepresented or "low admission" country is a country from which fewer than 50,000 people have migrated to the United States in the preceding five years. The Department of State publishes application deadlines and a list of eligible countries in each of six regions in a monthly Visa Bulletin.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) makes available 55,000 permanent resident, or immigrant, visas (also known as green cards) each year through the green card lottery. People from underrepresented countries can enter the lottery by submitting an application.

The lottery is held for a month each fall at the Department of State's National Visa Center. A computer randomly chooses winners from all of the qualified entries.

Winning applicants are notified during the spring (for DV 2002, between May and June 2001) following the fall application period and must then apply for the green card through the INS. Winning the green card lottery does not guarantee you'll get a green card.