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US Green Card Lottery Period for Fiscal Year 2020Begins October 3rd, 2018
The US State Department has announced that the entry period for the Diversity Visa program for the fiscal year 2020 (DV-2020), popularly known as the Green Card Lottery, will begin on Wednesday, October 3rd at 12pm EDT and end on Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at 12pm EST.
Administrated by the Department of State, the lottery program makes 55,000 permanent resident visas (green cards) available to national of countries with historically low number of immigrants in the United States.
Kenya is among the countries eligible to participate in the program.
For DV-2020, nationals of the following countries are ineligible to participate in the program because they have had more than 50,000 natives immigrate to the United States over the last five years: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam.
Winners of the DV-2019 lottery program will be eligible to migrate to the United States starting in January, 2020 after passing through mandatory background checks and interviews at the US embassies located in their home countries. It is only after passing the background checks and interview that lottery winners will be issued with a permanent resident visa (green card).
To qualify for a Diversity Visa, an applicant must be a national of a qualifying country and have either completed high school education or have worked in a qualifying occupation for at least two years. Anyone who does not meet this minimum criteria is urged not to submit an application, as they will NOT be issued with a permanent resident visa even if they are selected in the lottery.
There is no cost to register participate in the lottery.
The State Department also strongly urges entrants to complete the entry form themselves, without a “visa consultant” or “visa agent”.
Applications are only accepted online at the Department of State website.
