The 2013 Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, also known as the Green Card Lottery, is to close on November 2nd, meaning that anyone who wishes to enter needs to do so by then. A total of 50,000 permanent resident visas, or green cards, are issued every year under the green card lottery. There is no fee, and applications have to be made online.
The annual Green Card Lottery was first held 18 years ago, back in 1995, and is open to citizens of nations that have historically low immigration rates to the United States, with the intention of increasing the diversity of the country’s population. All the applications in a year are put into a lottery, with 50,000 people being chosen at random.
The winners then have to have their details sent to USCIS (the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), which checks that they meet with the entry requirements of the US. Even if the lottery selects someone, they will still not be eligible to get a green card unless they have received an education equivalent to finishing US high school, or have had at least two years of experience in a qualifying occupation sometime in the last five years.
In 2013 citizens of Nigeria have now joined the list of countries that are not eligible for the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program because more than 50,000 people have immigrated to the United States from that country in the last five years.
