2006 Diversity Visa Lottery Program Registration

September 29, 2004

Applications for the 2006 Diversity Visa (DV) Lottery will be accepted between November 5, 2004 and January 7, 2005. Persons seeking to apply must register electronically, online through the designated Internet website, http://www.dvlottery.state.gov , during the registration period. The 2006 Diversity Visa Lottery marks the second year that electronic registration is required. Paper entries and mail-in requests for Diversity Visa Lottery registration are not accepted.
The Department of State implemented the electronic registration system last year for the 2005 Diversity Visa Lottery to improve efficiency and make the process less prone to fraud, thus making it less vulnerable to use by persons who may pose a threat to the security interests of the United
States.
The congressionally mandated Diversity Immigrant Visa Program is administered on an annual basis by the Department of State and conducted under the terms of Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Section 131 of the Immigration Act of 1990 (Pub. L. 101-649) amended
INA 203 to provide for a new class of immigrants known as "diversity immigrants" (DV immigrants). The Act makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

The annual DV program makes permanent residence visas available to persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. Diversity Visa entries are chosen by a computer-generated random lottery drawing. The visas, however, are distributed among six geographic regions with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and with no visas going to citizens of countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the past five years. Within each region, no one country may receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.

For DV-2006, natives of the following countries[1] are not eligible to apply because they sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years:

CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR,
HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, RUSSIA, SOUTH KOREA,
UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and
VIETNAM. Persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible.
__________
[1]The term "country" in this notice includes countries, economies and other
jurisdictions explicitly listed beginning on page 13.

REQUIREMENTS FOR ENTRY
Applicant must be a native of one of the countries listed beginning on page 13. See "List Of Countries By Region Whose Natives Qualify."

Native of a country whose natives qualify: In most cases this means the country in which the applicant was born. However, there are two other ways a person may be able to qualify. First, if a person was born in a country whose natives are ineligible but his/her spouse was born in a country whose natives are eligible, such person can claim the spouse’s country of birth provided both the applicant and spouse are issued visas and enter the U.S. simultaneously. Second, if a person was born in a country whose natives are ineligible, but neither of his/her parents was born there or resided there at the time of his/her birth, such person may claim nativity in one of the parents’ country of birth if it is a country whose natives qualify for the DV-2006 program. Applicant must meet either the education or training requirement of the DV program.

Education or Training: An applicant 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 the applicant cannot meet these requirements, he or she should NOT submit an entry to the DV program.

FOR PROCEDURES FOR SUBMITTING AN ENTRY TO DV-2006 go to:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2004/36613.htm