Important information for the Green Card Lottery (DV-2010)

• The congressionally mandated Diversity Immigrant Visa Program ("Green Card Lottery") is administered on an annual basis by the Department of State and provides a maximum of 55,000 Diversity Visas (DV) each fiscal year to be made available to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.
  
• The annual DV program makes visas available to persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. The visas are distributed among six geographic regions, with a greater number of visas 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 U.S. over the period of the past five years. Within each region, no single country may receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.
  
• For DV-2010, natives of the following countries were not eligible to apply because the countries sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years: BRAZIL, CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, ECUADOR, EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, PERU, POLAND, SOUTH KOREA, UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and VIETNAM.
  
• Persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan were eligible. For DV-2010, Russia has returned to the list of eligible countries. Kosovo has also been added to the list of eligible countries.
  
• The Department of state utilizes special technology and other means to identify those who commit fraud for the purposes of illegal immigration or those who submit multiple entries.
  
• In DV-2010, for the first time, those who submit entries may check the status of entries online and determine whether their entries are selected or not selected. Successful entrants will continue to receive notification letters by mail.