2016 Green Card Lottery Opens Oct. 1

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. Sept. 30, 2014: The next annual green card lottery that allows citizens of the world to enter for a chance to win permanent residency in the U.S., opens tomorrow, October 1.

The 2016 Diversity Visa Program (DV-2016) will open at noon EST on Wednesday, October 1, 2014, and will close at noon EST on Monday, November 3, 2014.

Nationals of Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Colombia, Mexico, Canada Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador, and Brazil in the Americas are ineligible to apply along with those from Bangladesh, China (mainland-born), India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam.

Other interested nationals can submit electronic only entries at dvlottery.state.gov. Entrants must print and retain their online confirmation page after completing their DV entries so that they will be able to check their entry status.

The congressionally mandated Diversity Visa Program is administered on an annual basis by the Department of State and provides for a maximum of 50,000 Diversity Visas each fiscal year to a class of immigrants known as “diversity immigrants.”

The annual DV program makes visas available to persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. A computer-generated, random 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 United States over the period of the past five years. No single country may receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.

For detailed information about entry requirements, along with frequently asked questions about the DV program, see the instructions for the DV-2016 program available at .