Washington -- Applicants for the
United States' 2009 Diversity Visa Lottery (DV-2009) are
encouraged to enter early in the two-month registration
period because excessive demand might slow down the system
as the deadline nears, according to the State Department.
The Diversity Visa Lottery registration
period will be October 3 to December 2, 2007, the
State Department announced September 25.
The Diversity Visa Lottery winners are selected
in a computerized random drawing. Persons whose names are
selected may apply for one of 50,000 Diversity Immigrant
Visas made available each year. These visas are available
only to persons from eligible countries with low immigration
rates to the United States, according to the rules of the
DV program.
Registration for the Diversity Visa
Lottery is free. Persons seeking to enter the lottery
must register online through the designated Web site (www.dvlottery.state.gov/),
and digital photos must be submitted with the registration
form. Paper entries will not be accepted.
The Department of State Kentucky Consular
Center in Williamsburg, Kentucky, will notify the lottery
winners by mail (NOT e-mail) between May 2008 and July 2008.
The winners will be provided instructions on how to apply
for DV-2009 visas, which will be issued between October
1, 2008, and September 30, 2009.
Lottery and visa applicants must meet certain
education or work experience requirements. (See related
article.) These are outlined in the DV-2009 instructions.
The DV-2009 lottery will mark the fifth
year in which the registration process has been conducted
entirely via the Internet.
Entries will be accepted between noon Eastern
Daylight Time (EDT) (1600 GMT), Wednesday, October 3, 2007,
and noon Eastern Standard Time (EST) (1700 GMT) Sunday,
December 2, 2007. No entries will be accepted after that
time, according to the DV-2009 instructions.
Applicants should be aware that there
is only one official site for the diversity visa
lottery registration (www.dvlottery.state.gov/),
according to the State Department.
The visas will be distributed among six
geographic regions, with a greater number of visas going
to regions with lower rates of immigration. Natives of the
following countries are not eligible to apply because those
nations sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the
United States over the previous five years: Brazil, Canada,
China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan,
Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Korea, United
Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories,
and Vietnam.
Persons born in the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region (SAR) of China, Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible
to apply for the DV program.
More than 6.4 million people submitted entries
for the previous visa lottery, DV-2008, during the two-month
registration period in late 2006. (See related
article.)
Instructions
and the entry
form for DV-2009, as well as a warning
note on fake DV program sites, are available on the
State Department Web site. The entry form will be
available starting October 3.
The English language version of the DV-2009
Lottery Instructions currently is the only official version,
according to the State Department. However, instructions
will be available in other languages (on the instructions
page) as translations become available.
For additional information on U.S. immigration
policy, see Visas
and Immigration.
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