Annual quota for Green Card Lottery

The US congress authorizes every year the allotment of 55,000 permanent resident status visas (green cards) through a computer generated lottery drawing to those who find it difficult to immigrate to the United States through other channels. Permanent Resident Status gives you and your family the legal right to work and live permanently in the United States .

Requirements to enter the Lottery program

1. You must be a native of a qualifying country
2. You must have a high school education or experience in an occupation requiring at least two years of training.

List of ineligibility of countries

Eligibility is determined by country of birth. Persons born in China, Taiwan, India, the Philippines, South Korea, Pakistan, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Poland, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, El Salvador, or Jamaica are ineligible,

The selection process

Applicants are selected from a random computer generated lottery drawing. The Diversity Immigrant program apportions visa issuance among six geographic zones: (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America (other than Mexico ), Oceania, and South America (including Mexico , Central America and the Caribbean ). Each of one these six regions are divided into high and low admission quotas. A greater portion of the visas go to the low admission regions as opposed to high admission regions which will be entirely excluded from the lottery. No single country may receive more than 7% of all allotted visas.