US ‘diversity visa’ lottery opens |05 November 2009

This makes available a maximum of 55,000 visas a year to people from countries with low rates of emigration to the US.

Entries for the DV-2011 lottery must be submitted online before noon, Eastern Standard Time, on Monday, November 30, 2009.

Applicants may access the electronic diversity visa entry form at www.dvlottery.state.gov during the registration period. Paper entries will not be accepted.

All other details of the programme are given on this website, and applicants are strongly encouraged not to wait until the last week of the registration period to enter as heavy demand may result in delays.

The annual DV programme makes visas available to people meeting simple, but strict, eligibility requirements, including their education or job qualifications.

A computer-generated, random lottery chooses people for the visas, which are distributed among six geographic regions, with a greater number 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 US over the period of the past five years.

Within each region, no single country may receive more than 7% of the available DVs in any one year.