DV Visa Program: All You Need to Know
If you have plans to immigrate to the US at any point in the future, there is a possibility that you have thought about acquiring a DV visa. If you are lucky enough to be selected for the DV program, this is one of the easiest ways to obtain lawful permanent residency in the US. But what is the DV program?
The “Diversity Immigrant Visa Program”, also known as the “DV Visa” program or the “DV Lottery”, is a statutorily created immigrant visa program for citizens of countries that historically have low rates of immigration into the US. The Department of State administers this visa program every year. Every year, around 50000 diversity visas are made available to potential immigrants in this category. The entry period for the DV-2024 Diversity Visa Program was between October 5, 2022, and November 8, 2022. If you have applied for a diversity visa during this period or planning to apply for the DV-2025 Diversity Visa Program, you probably want to know more about the program. In this blog, we will discuss the details of this visa program.
How to Apply:
You can apply for a Diversity Visa within a limited period of time each fiscal year. The time period during which the Diversity Visa is available is published by the Department of State every year. Within this time period, you can visit the official Electronic Diversity Visa (E-DV) website (https://dvprogram.state.gov/) and apply for the visa. A person can only apply once during each registration period.
Once you complete the registration, you will receive a confirmation number. You will have to use this number for checking the status of your application. Registration is completely free.
How to Know if You are Eligible:
The DV program has a few requirements that an applicant needs to meet in order to be eligible. These are:
- You must be a native of an eligible country: The DV visa is only available to natives of countries with a historically low immigration rate in the US. The list of countries that are eligible can vary between years. This usually happens when the citizens of a particular country have immigrated to the US at very high rates in recent years, and for this reason, the Diversity quota does not apply to them. For example, natives of Bangladesh were not eligible for the DV-2024 program, because more than 50000 natives of the country immigrated to the US in the past 5 years.
- You must meet the education/work experience requirement of the DV program: In order to do so, you must have either a successfully completed 12-year course of formal elementary and secondary education or two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience to perform. If you meet these requirements, you will be eligible to apply for the DV visa.
Selection of Applicants:
The selection process of Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) applicants is conducted randomly by the Department of State. Once the selection process is done, the Entrant Status Check on the Electronic Diversity Visa (E-DV) website is updated to inform all entrants whether their online registration was selected or not. For the DV-2023 program, the date of this update was on or about May 7, 2022.
If your entry has been selected, you will be directed to a confirmation page with further instructions about the visa. You will not receive any email or other notifications for being selected, you can only receive confirmation through the Entrant Status Check.
What to Do Once You Are Selected:
You will need to be admitted to the US if you are selected by the DV program and want to immigrate to the US. In order to do so, you need to complete the form DS-260 online. You can apply for your DV case number in the online DS-260 form to access and update the information about yourself and your family that you included in your DV entry.
After completing your DS-260 form, you will have to submit the supporting documents. For the DV visa, the following supporting documents need to be provided for each eligible applicant:
- Birth certificates
- Court and prison records, if applicable
- Military records, if applicable,
- Police certificates
- Photocopies of the biographic data page of a valid passport.
After submitting the DS-260 form online, you will receive a confirmation page. You will need to bring a printed copy of this confirmation page to your Visa Interview. In the interview, the consular officer will ask you questions about your eligibility to immigrate under US law. After the interview, you will be informed by the Consular Officer if your application has been approved or denied. When approved, you will be informed how and when your passport and visa will be returned to you. If denied, you will be informed about the reason for your ineligibility, and what further steps you can take. After your initial selection in the DV program which takes around 7 months, it may take up to 14 months for you to be scheduled for an interview and receive the visa. This depends on how soon you make your DS-260 application after getting selected by the DV program.
These are the basics that you need to know if you have already applied for a DV visa or planning to apply for one in the future. If you have applied for DV-2024, you will be able to check whether you are selected or not in the Entrant Status Check on the Electronic Diversity Visa (E-DV) website on May 6, 2023.
The DHS stresses that you should prepare and submit your application for the DV program by yourself. This is to make sure that you are not a victim of fraud. However, while you should definitely register for the program by yourself, it is still a good idea to enlist the help of an expert immigration attorney to prepare your subsequent immigrant visa application and to prepare yourself for your interview with Consular Officer. Attorney Raju Mahajan & Associates has been trying to assist individuals in this sector. Our immigration law office provides numerous legal services, including online consultations, which you can access from any part of the world.
