Every year 50 000 permanent US residency visas are issued to immigrants deemed matching particular criteria and based in countries with low immigration volume to the US as part of the Diversity Visa immigration program or the “Green Card” lottery (a.k.a. Diversity Visa Lottery).
OFFICIAL LOTTERY WEBSITE: WWW.DVLOTTERY.STATE.GOV
LOTTERY DV-2020: Online registration. Applications for the DV-2020 immigration visa program can be submitted online trough website www.dvlottery.state.gov starting as of Wednesday, October 3, 2018 at 12:00 PM (Eastern time zone, GMT-4) until Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at 12:00 PM (Eastern time zone, GMT-4). Instructions for the 2020 DV Immigration Visa Program (DV-2020) are available in the U.S. Department of State website.
Applicants are advised to avoid procrastination of their applications until the last week of registration. A high number of requests during this week of registration may affect the operation of the website. Application in paper or applications applied post deadline will not be accepted. Lawfully one application per person can be submitted to the program. The U.S. Department of State uses special technologies and other means to identify individuals who submit multiple applications. If one submits more than one application, all applications submitted by this individual will be disqualified. Registration and participation to the program is free of charge.
We recommend that you fill out and submit your application individually without the help of “visa consultant”, “visa agent” or other third party services. In case you decide to use some help, you should stay with that person at the time of filling in of your application and retain a copy of the confirmation page and your unique confirmation number. It is extremely important that you retain your confirmation page and unique confirmation number. Without this information, you will not be able to access the Diversity Visa account system for advice on the status of your entry.
The “Green Card” lottery 2019 (DV-2019) was held from October 18, 2017 until November 22, 2017. The information about the DV2019 lottery is available on the U.S. Department of State website. A detailed description of the paperwork to be filled and filed by the winners of the lottery on the day of the interview can be found on the State Department website.
An additional requirement to bring with for the interview is a proof of address, this address will be used to deliver the US right to residency documents (Passport and Visa) in case of a successful application 2-3 days after the interview.
Fraudulent mail and e-mails
The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. embassies pay close attention to the ever increasing amount of fraudulent letters and emails which various fraudsters are sending out to people interested in the U.S. immigration visa or the “Green Card” lottery. Fraudsters tend to impersonate U.S. government officials, with the intention to obtain money payments from their victims. For this reason please read the lottery instructions carefully in order to familiarize with the process of when to expect any information and the notifiers.
IMPORTANT NOTE! Remember that issue of a visa does not guarantee you an entrance into the US. Each case of denied admission is investigated individually but it is often due to insufficient funds which are required and to be represented proof of at the border crossing. Refused entrance to the U.S., except visa-free travel, can be disputed in court, but in this case it may be required to spend a long time in the U.S. Immigration Prison up to a half year.
It’s important to not walk into the hands of human trafficking groups when going to explore the beautiful US. In order to avoid this, it is advised to use only officially issued travel documents that can be obtained from U.S. embassies all over the world. Border crossing happens only at the border checkpoints.
According to a U.S. study millions of men, women and children are victimized by human traffickers every year.
People are becoming victims of traffickers in a various ways. Such as use of physical force, false promises of a job offer abroad or a possible arranged marriage with an alien to get a woman involved in prostitution or in the pornographic industry. The same means of subjugation can be used to sexually exploit a person for commercial purposes and other forms of forced labour as well as in agriculture or manufacturing, which equates to enslavement. The victims of human trafficking suffer from both physical and emotional abuse and rape. Victims of trafficking and their families are threatened, deprived of passports, and their personal freedom is restricted.
Human trafficking cases have been discovered in every country in the world, and the US, together with its allies are committed to combat this type of crime on a global scale. In order to fight human trafficking three main goals have been set: prevention; helping the victims of human trafficking; prosecution of the traffickers.