I bet most of you reading RRW don’t know about this ‘ingenious’ (not!) lottery program the US State Department has been running for years (Congress made them do it!). You see we don’t have enough diversity in America’s immigrant population so each year the State Department selects 55,000 people (through a lottery system) who can legally come from around the world to live and work in America .
However, once the number of immigrants from a certain country tops 50,000 in the previous 5 years, that country’s citizens are cut off from putting their name in the hat.
The program, sometimes called the Green Card lottery, began in 1995, see history here.
The State Department website is here. The countries and number of ‘winners’ for FY 2013 are here.
Nigeria (others) has been cut off for FY2015 and that is the subject of this short article at
Afrique Jet Actualité en Lignesubject.
BTW, I’m pretty sure the Gang of Eight’s Senate bill on “immigration reform” drops this program, but at the moment I can’t remember and am too lazy to go look it up (especially since the bill may be dying in this Congress). Supposedly the entrants under the Diversity lottery program are somewhat educated and come with some job training/experience (because Congress thinks we need more foreign workers to compete with Americans along with bringing the joys of multiculturalism to your towns and cities).
Nigeria barred from US visa lottery – Nigeria has been barred from the 2015 US Diversity Immigrant Visa Programme, according to the US State Department.
It said Nigeria was excluded from the DV-2015 because over 50,000 of its citizens have immigrated into the US in the last five years on the strength of the programme.
‘For DV-2015, natives of the following countries are not eligible to apply, because more than 50,000 natives of these countries immigrated to the United States in the previous five years: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam,’ the State Department said on its official website.
The DV 2015 Programme will begin 1 Oct. 2013 and run through 2 Nov. 2013.
PANA reports that the Diversity Immigrant Visa Programme, which is administered annually by the Department of State, provides for a class of immigrants known as “diversity immigrants,” from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the US.