Green Card USA 2023: which countries are not eligible for the Visa Lottery?

Why can't all countries participate in the visa lottery?

It should be noted that the law provides annually 55,000 permanent residency visas for all those individuals who are allowed to participate.

However, not all countries can participate since the United States has restricted this lottery to certain countries with a high immigration rate.

Visas are only distributed in six geographic regions, with the largest number assigned to regions with the lowest immigration rates to the United States, and without visas to citizens of countries that have sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the past five years. In addition, no country may receive more than 7% of the available diversity visas in a single year.

Around seven million people applied to participate in the program, but only 50,000 of them were awarded a Green Card through the lottery.

When is the registration for the 2025 visa lottery?

People who wanted to participate in the visa lottery for the 2024 period could only do so until November 8, 2022. However, it was revealed that the registration for the 2025 lottery will open at some point this year 2023.

The United States government reminds that there is no fee to participate in the annual diversity visa program and warns to be careful with deceptive websites that try to pass themselves off as official websites of the Department of State.

Which countries cannot apply to the visa lottery?

This modality is intended for residents of countries with a low immigration rate to the United States. Therefore, the following list of countries is not allowed to enter the annual visa lottery to the US territory.

• Mexico
• Bangladesh
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• Colombia
• El Salvador
• Philippines
• Haiti
• Honduras
• India
• Jamaica
• Nigeria
• Pakistan
• Dominican Republic
• South Korea
• United Kingdom and territories
• Venezuela
• Vietnam