The United States of America is the world’s #1 immigration destination, with over one-million people from every region of the Earth approved to immigrate to the USA each year. Out of an overall US population of around 319 million people, approximately 41 million are immigrants (20% of the world’s entire immigrant population, according to the United Nations). The USA has a long, proud tradition of welcoming immigrants who left their home countries in search of the “American Dream” in this amazing land of opportunity and the resulting diversity is a key reason the United States is known as “The Great Melting Pot.” In fact, this idea of many people from different backgrounds blending together as one united people was so important to America’s “Founding Fathers” that the Latin phrase E pluribus unum (“From the many, one”) was chosen as the official Motto of the United States of America, as seen on the Great Seal of the United States and on US currency.

 

Today, the American Government continues to desire a diverse democracy and this is why the US Congress established the Diversity Visa (DV) Program by passing the Immigration Act of 1990. The goal of the Diversity Visa Program is to further diversify the US population by making available a Permanent Resident (PR) Visa to the United States for up to 50,000 foreign nationals from different regions of the globe each year. Since fairness is an important American value, the US Congress decided to use a lottery system to randomly select which of the approximately 10 million applicants to the DV Program would be among around 100,000 winners chosen annually to have the opportunity to apply for the 50,000 Diversity Visas authorized to be issued each year. That is why this US immigration program is known as the Diversity Visa (DV) Lottery Program (also referred to as the Green Card Lottery). Foreign nationals who are randomly selected as winners of the Green Card Lottery, successfully pass the Consular Interview that follows and are issued a Diversity Visa are authorized to move to America as US permanent residents.