Diversity Lottery - Dreams Vanish

Every year about 15,000,000 people apply for the Diversity Visa (green card) lottery. The Diversity Visa Program was authorized by Congress in 1990 as a way to increase immigration from under-represented countries. According to this criteria, the lottery has been successful. In 2009, 49% of lottery immigrant were from Africa while only 11% of the total 1.1 million legal immigrant to the US that year were from Africa.

The green card lottery typically opens for entry for one month in October and results are available on May 1^st. There is no fee to enter but winners pay $819 in government application fees. A total of 100,000 winners are selected for further processing. Many people are weeded out for failing to meet deadlines and other requirements. Eventually, about 50,000 people are able to get a green card through the lottery each year.

This year, in the first few days of May, about 1.9 million people checked the green card lottery results online and about 22,000 people were thrilled that they had been selected. A few days later, their hopes and dreams were dashed. There was an error in the software that selected the winners and 90% of the winners were from the first two days of the application window instead of the full 30 day registration period. 

In order to ensure fairness, the US government is going to use the same software to reselect the winners over the entire 30 day registration period. Some of the false winners have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the State Department to reinstate their selection. A new drawing will use the same entries and the results for the new draw will be available July 15.

My Law, LLC
Immigration & Tax Law Firm

www.mylawllc.com

Phone: (630) 903-9625

1230 E. Diehl Rd. Suite 106

Naperville, IL 60563

E-mail: attorney@mylawllc.com