Diversity visa lottery program is exclusively designed for inhabitants of those countries that show low rates of migration to the United States. Every year 55,000 immigrant visas are made available to eligible candidates through this program. This class of immigrants are termed are ‘Diversity Immigrants’.

This program is held by the DOS (Department of state). The DOS randomly selects nearly 110,000 entries from which only 55,000 entries are qualified for visa. Once the 55,000 mark is reached the Diversity Visa Lottery program is closed.

The diversity visa lottery program makes available permanent residence to people who meet the simple, but strict eligibility requirements. This is implemented through a computer generated random lottery drawing. These visas are distributed among six geographic regions with a large number of visas going to nations with very low rates of immigration to the U.S. These visas are not applicable for the nationalities of the countries that have sent more than 50,000 people over the tenure of last five years.

The candidate must be from an eligible nation; the USCIS has prepared a list of qualifying countries broadly categorized into six regions. There is also a separate list prepared, which shows the nations which are ineligible for diversity visa lottery; such countries would have sent more than 50,000 natives from their country to the U.S over the past five years. There are two more ways through which you can qualify. It includes your spouse’s nativity or parents’ nativity if you wish to avail this diversity visa lottery scheme.

Diversity visa lottery applicants are required to have either a high school education or equivalent or two years of work experience in occupations as categorized by the embassy.

There is no minimum or maximum age limits apart from necessary documents and photographs that should to be submitted as claimed by embassy. Applications must be filed electronically within a stipulated dead line marked by the DOS. The application time usually takes up to 30 minutes.

Diversity visa lottery DOES NOT grant you U.S. citizenship. The process of getting a US citizenship is pretty detailed and different.

The important thing to be kept in mind is there are a lot of fraudulent web sites which are involved in the diversity visa lottery scam stating that you have to pay some dollars to get the application. Feel free to contact the consulate or the embassy before filing any application.