U.S. Diversity Visa (Green Card) Lottery Program DV-2014 Opens October 2, 2012

The U.S. Department of State recently announced that the Green Card Lottery 2014 (DV-2014) Program will begin on Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 12:00pm EDT and conclude on November 3, 2012 at 12pm EDT.

The Diversity Visa lottery will offer a maximum of 50,000 people from countries with low numbers of immigrants in the U.S. (Kenya included) a chance to obtain permanent U.S. residency.

Eligibility Criteria:

• To enter the DV program, you must be a native of one of the listed countries. See List Of Countries By Region Whose Natives Qualify. Native of a qualifying country: In most cases, this means the country in which you were born. However, there are two other ways you may be able to qualify. First, if you were born in a country whose natives are ineligible but your spouse was born in a country whose natives are eligible, you can claim your spouse’s country of birth – provided that both you and your spouse are on the selected entry, are issued visas, and enter the United States simultaneously. Second, if you were born in a country whose natives are ineligible, but neither of your parents was born there or resided there at the time of your birth, you may claim nativity in one of your parents’ countries of birth if it is a country whose natives qualify for the DV-2014 program.
• To enter the DV program, you must meet either the education or work experience requirement of the DV program: you must have either a high school education or its equivalent, defined as successful completion of a 12-year course of elementary and secondary education; OR two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation requiring at least two years of training or experience to perform. The U.S. Department of Labor’s O*Net OnLine database will be used to determine qualifying work experience.

If you do not meet either of these requirements, the U.S. State Department advises that  you should NOT submit an entry to the DV program.

Applications will only be accepted online beginning October 2nd by filling out form E-VD at http://www.dvlottery.state.gov. Paper entries will not be accepted. Instructions on filling out the form are available at: http://travel.state.gov/pdf/DV_2014_Instructions.pdf.