Requirements to Participate in the US Green Card Lottery (DV-2025)

Registration for the green card lottery program for fiscal year 2025 (DV-2025) began on Wednesday, October 4, 2023 and will run until Tuesday, November 7, 2023 at 12pm EST.

The green card lottery program, officially known as the Diversity Visa program, runs for one month between October and November each year. The program is run by the US State Department and makes available on a lottery basis up to 55,000 green cards to nationalities of countries with history low rates of immigration to the United States.

There are two major requirements to participate in the lottery:

Requirement #1:

Natives of countries with historically low rates of immigration (countries which had less than 50,000 of their citizens migrate to the US in the previous five years) to the United States may be eligible to enter.

If you are not a native of a country with historically low rates of immigration to the United States, there are two other ways you might be able to qualify.

• Is your spouse a native of a country with historically low rates of immigration to the United States? If yes, you can claim your spouse’s country of birth – provided that you and your spouse are named on the selected entry, are found eligible and issued diversity visas, and enter the United States simultaneously.
• Are you a native of a country that does not have historically low rates of immigration to the United States, but in which neither of your parents was born or legally resident at the time of your birth? If yes, you may claim the country of birth of one of your parents if it is a country whose natives are eligible for the DV-2025 program.

For DV-2025, native of the following countries are ineligible to participate in the program because more than 50,000 of their natives migrated to the US in the previous five years: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, The People’s Republic of China (including mainland and Hong Kong born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Republic of Korea (South Korea), Venezuela, and Vietnam. Natives of Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible.

Requirement #2:

Level of Education and Experience– Each DV applicant must meet the education/work experience requirement of the program by either possessing  at least a high school education or equivalent or two years of work experience in the past five years in an occupation requiring two years of training or experience.

Registration for entry into the lottery is done exclusively online by submitting Form DS-5501 on the DV program website and is free of charge. Website: https://dvprogram.state.gov.