Diversity Immigrant Visa

The second program was OP-1, run through a lottery from 1989 to 1991 and available for natives of countries with low levels of recent immigration to the United States.

[23] In 2011, a computer error caused a non-random selection of lottery applicants, leading the Department of State to cancel the initial result.

In 2022, the requirement was removed after a federal court found that the Department of State had not followed the proper procedure, with a public notice and comments, before implementing it.

[29][30] In 2002, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, an Egyptian immigrant who maintained residency in United States through his wife's diversity visa,[31] killed two people and injured four others at Los Angeles International Airport before being shot to death by an El Al security guard.

[39] In 2013, the so-called "Gang of Eight" - a bi-partisan group of eight United States Senators - introduced a bill that would have comprehensively reformed the immigration system.

[10] In 2017, Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov, who had immigrated from Uzbekistan on a diversity visa in 2010, killed eight and injured eleven when he drove his truck down a bike path in Lower Manhattan.

[45][46] Following Trump's call to end the program, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, indicated that diversity visa lottery recipients lack thorough vetting, something Politifact rated as false, noting that all recipients of the visa undergo background checks, security screenings, and interviews by consular officers before arrival in the U.S.[47] To enter the lottery, applicants must have been born in an eligible country, with two exceptions: the applicant may claim the spouse's country of birth instead if desired, or a parent's country of birth if neither parent was born in the applicant's country of birth and neither parent legally resided there when the applicant was born.

However, there are some exceptions: Northern Ireland and Taiwan are treated as separate countries, and Macau is considered part of Portugal under Europe (even after its sovereignty returned to China in 1999).

Among regions of the same group, the diversity visas are allocated proportionally to their population, excluding ineligible countries (those that were the origin of more than 50,000 immigrants in the previous five years).

The reason for the larger selection is to ensure that all available diversity visas are eventually given each year, as some applicants are expected to fail general immigration requirements or may decide to withdraw and not to continue the process.

For this reason, applicants who were not initially selected in the lottery should keep checking their status online periodically, until the end of the respective fiscal year.

[55] Those born in any territory that was the origin of more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States via family and employment categories in the previous five years are not eligible to receive a diversity visa.

For DV-2026 (the most recent lottery, with entry period in 2024), natives of the following nations were ineligible: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland and Hong Kong), Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

[54] The first program was in fiscal year 1995, and the following 12 countries were ineligible from the start: Canada, China (mainland), Dominican Republic, El Salvador, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom and its dependent territories (except Northern Ireland and Hong Kong), and Vietnam.

[56] Since then, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Nigeria, Pakistan and Venezuela have been added to the ineligible list, Taiwan and the United Kingdom have been removed from it, and Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, Poland and Russia have been added and later removed from the ineligible list, reflecting shifting levels of immigration from these countries.

[58] There is no charge to enter the Diversity Visa lottery, and the only way to do so is by completing and sending the electronic form available at the U.S. Department of State website during the registration period.

The Department of State and the Federal Trade Commission have warned that some of these businesses falsely claim to increase someone's chances of winning the lottery, or that they are affiliated with the U.S.

[66] There have also been numerous cases of fraudulent emails and letters which falsely claim to have been sent by the Department of State and that the recipient has been granted a permanent resident card.

These messages prompt the recipients to transfer a "visa processing fee" as a prerequisite for obtaining a "guaranteed" green card.

The messages are sometimes sent to people who never participated in the lottery and can look trustworthy as they contain the recipient's exact name and contact details and what appears to be a legal notice.

[67] The office of inspector general has identified multiple problems with DV lottery in several countries, including Ukraine, Ghana, Albania in embassy inspection reports.

[75] In 2004, the State Department's deputy inspector general warned that there were security risks to granting visas to winners from countries with ties to terrorism.

"[77] The uncle of Akayed Ullah, the man who set off a bomb on a New York City Subway platform in 2017, won a diversity lottery, which enabled him to bring his nephew to the United States under the family reunification provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

[77] According to the Cato Institute, immigrants from the countries with the highest percentage of diversity visas have vastly lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans.