As of Oc­to­ber 2, 2024, peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in mi­grat­ing to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to win a bona fide Im­mi­grant Visa through that coun­try’s Di­ver­si­ty Visa Lot­tery Pro­gramme.

The 2026 edi­tion (DV-2026) of the Pro­gramme—known al­so as the “Green Card Lot­tery”—of­fi­cial­ly launched at noon yes­ter­day.  A state­ment from the U.S. Em­bassy says the pro­gramme will end at noon East­ern Stan­dard Time (EST) on Tues­day, No­vem­ber 5, 2024. 

“DV-2026 is the on­ly of­fi­cial lot­tery pro­gram for im­mi­grant visas to the Unit­ed States,” the state­ment from the U.S. Em­bassy said. 

“This an­nu­al U.S. Gov­ern­ment-spon­sored pro­gramme makes more than 50,000 im­mi­grant visas avail­able world­wide to peo­ple from coun­tries with his­tor­i­cal­ly low rates of im­mi­gra­tion to the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go,” it ex­plained.

The Em­bassy is re­mind­ing the pub­lic that the ap­pli­ca­tion process is free.

“Ap­pli­ca­tions are ac­cept­ed elec­tron­i­cal­ly on­ly through https://dvpro­gram.state.gov/,” the Em­bassy said.  “Any web­site ask­ing for a fee to ap­ply is not as­so­ci­at­ed with the U.S. gov­ern­ment.”

Ap­pli­cants al­so are en­cour­aged to sub­mit their ap­pli­ca­tions as ear­ly as pos­si­ble.

“Do not to wait un­til the last week of the reg­is­tra­tion pe­ri­od to en­ter, as heavy de­mand in the fi­nal days of the ap­pli­ca­tion pe­ri­od is open may re­sult in web­site de­lays,” the Em­bassy ad­vis­es.  “No en­tries will be ac­cept­ed af­ter noon EST on No­vem­ber 5, 2024.” 

The Em­bassy ad­vis­es po­ten­tial ap­pli­cants to ob­serve the fol­low­ing when prepar­ing their ap­pli­ca­tions:

  ●   When reg­is­ter­ing, ap­pli­cants must print and save their con­fir­ma­tion page with their unique con­fir­ma­tion code to check the sta­tus of their en­try.  Ap­pli­cants must take care to keep this page; the Em­bassy can­not re­place this con­fir­ma­tion code.

  ●   Be­gin­ning May 3, 2025, en­trants will be able to use their con­fir­ma­tion num­ber to see if their en­try was se­lect­ed via the on­line En­trant Sta­tus Check web­site at https://dvpro­gram.state.gov/.

  ●   Suc­cess­ful en­trants will re­ceive in­struc­tions at that time on how to ap­ply for im­mi­grant visas for them­selves and their el­i­gi­ble fam­i­ly mem­bers.

  ●   Con­fir­ma­tion of visa in­ter­view ap­point­ments will al­so be made through En­trant Sta­tus Check.  Ap­pli­cants will not re­ceive no­ti­fi­ca­tion let­ters by mail, email or phone.  Any con­tact by a third par­ty claim­ing the ap­pli­cant has won the lot­tery is fraud­u­lent. It is the sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the ap­pli­cant to check the web­site for no­ti­fi­ca­tion of lot­tery se­lec­tion.

“Di­ver­si­ty Visa ap­pli­cants are ad­vised to re­main vig­i­lant for fraud­u­lent emails, web­sites, and let­ters claim­ing to be part of the ap­pli­ca­tion process,” the Em­bassy’s re­lease warns. “These are used by scam­mers pos­ing as the U.S. gov­ern­ment to ex­tract funds or ac­cess bank­ing in­for­ma­tion.”

It added: “Ap­pli­cants are re­mind­ed that there is no fee to ap­ply for Di­ver­si­ty Visas, and the U.S. gov­ern­ment does not re­quest any pay­ments via email or let­ter.”

Po­ten­tial ap­pli­cants are en­cour­aged to vis­it https://dvpro­gram.state.gov/, for de­tailed in­for­ma­tion about en­try re­quire­ments, along with fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions about the pro­gram, as well as the in­struc­tions for ap­ply­ing to the 2026 Di­ver­si­ty Visa lot­tery.