Requirements to Participate in the US Green Card Lottery

Registration for the green card lottery program for fiscal year 2024 (DV-2024) began on Wednesday, October 5, 2022 at 12pm EDT and runs until Tuesday, November 8, 2022. The program, officially known as the Diversity Visa program, is aimed at diversifying the US immigrant population and each year makes up to 55,000 permanent resident visas (green cards) to natives of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the US.

There are two requirements to participate in the program:

You must be a native of a country with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. Historically low rates of immigration to the US is defined by the US State Department as countries where more than 50,000 of their citizens migrated to the US within the last five years. Countries that are above this threshold are excluded from participating in the program. For DV-2024, countries whose citizens are excluded from participating in the lottery are For DV-2024, that list includes Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (including Hong Kong SAR), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, Venezuela, and Vietnam.
- If you are a native of an excluded country but your spouse is a native of an eligible country, you can use your spouse’s country of birth to become eligible, provided that both you and your spouse are named in the same entry, are both found eligible for Diversity Visas (green cards), and will both enter the US and the same time.
- If you are a native of an ineligible country but in which neither of your parents was born or legally resident at the time, you may claim the country of birth of either of your parents that meets the eligibility criteria.
Each application must meet the education or work experience requirement. The Education is defined as at least a high school education or its equivalent (successful completion of a 12-year elementary and secondary education) program. Those who did not complete a 12-year elementary and secondary education program but work in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience to perform are also eligible.

Registration for entry into the lottery is done exclusively online by submitting Form DS-5501 on the DV program website and is free of charge.