Diversity Immigrant Visa

The Diversity Immigrant Visa program, also known as the green card lottery, is a United States government lottery program for receiving an immigrant visa followed by a permanent resident card. The Immigration Act of 1990 established the current and permanent Diversity Visa (DV) program. The lottery is administered by the Department of State and conducted under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). It provides up to 55,000 immigrant visas annually and aims to diversify the immigrant population in the United States, by selecting applicants from countries with low numbers of immigrants in the previous five years. More than 22 million people apply for the lottery each year, which means that fewer than 1 in 400 applicants receive visas. Applicants enter the lottery by completing a form on the Department of State website. Attempts have been made to end the program since 2005.