Congress established the Diversity Visa
Program (the “Visa Lottery”) to provide up to
55,000 green cards to foreign nationals from countries with low rates
of immigration to the United States. The purpose is to diversify the
pool of immigrants. There is no government filing fee to apply. It only
requires filing at the USCIS website @ www.uscis.gov
during the 30 day time period. To qualify the applicant must be from an
eligible country, have the equivalent of a US high school education OR
possess 2 years of work experience in an occupation required 2 years of
training.
Millions of applicants enter the diversity
visa lottery online each year. The Kentucky Consular Center
disqualifies applicants who enter more than once. Entries are selected
at random by computer. The Kentucky Consular Center notifies the
winners by mail and includes instructions for the next step of the
application. Once the next application is received by the Kentucky
Consular Center, the lottery winner is scheduled for a visa interview
at the consulate abroad. The processing must be completed before
September 30th of the following year or the
application is cancelled.
Unfortunately, many visa lottery applicants
do not have access to a computer or they are not internet savvy.
Instead they use “visa agents” to enter the
lottery. Many of these visa agents wrongfully take advantage of
applicants. There are even many imposter websites set up to mimic the
U.S. government site. The imposter websites charge a fee when there is
no government filing fee to apply.
There are many examples of fraud and abuse
as reported by the US Government Reporting Office. Unscrupulous visa
agents use their own address on entry forms so that the notificaction
letters are delivered to them instead of the person selected for the
visa lottery. The visa agent incepts the official documents from the
Kentucky Consular Center to lottery winners. In some cases, visa agents
have charged ransoms of up to $20,000 to lottery winners. Or offered to
reduce the ransom if the lottery winner agreed to marry a person of the
visa agent's choosing. Typically, the new spouse also paid a fee to the
agent. These sham marriages are called “pop-ups”
since the relationships were formed after the visa lottery winners had
been selected.
Foreign nationals from countries that have
sent more than 50,0000 immigrants in the family or employment based
categories in any of the previous 5 years are not eligible for that
year's lottery. The list of countries NOT eligible can change every
year as immigration patterns change. However, foreign nationals from
sixteen (16) countries have been ineligible each year since 2000. The
following countries are NOT ELIGIBLE. Canada, China (mainland-born),
Columbia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica,
Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Korea, United
Kingdom, and Vietnam. Immigrants from Africa and Europe have received
the most diversity visas.
To avoid abuse, only use the official US
government website. If you cannot use the internet, only have a trusted
relative or friend apply for you. Make sure the address listed is yours
and not the person helping you.