US Diversity Visa Lottery registration starts for FY 2008
The U.S. Department of State has started accepting entries for the DV-2008 Program. Entries can be submited only electronically till noon (EST) on December 3, 2006. Paper entries will not be accepted. Applicants are strongly encouraged to not wait until the last week of the registration period to enter.
Eligibility to apply for this Program is determined by a person's place of birth not citizenship or residence. Persons born in any one of the following 19 countries cannot participate in the Program for 2008. The excluded countries are: the United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Korea, and Vietnam.
Persons born in Northern Ireland, Hong Kong S.A.R., Macau S.A.R. and Taiwan are eligible to enter.
If you were born in an ineligible country, but your spouse was not, you can claim your spouse's country of birth instead of your own, provided you and your spouse will immigrate to the United States together. Both you and your spouse can submit individual entries. If you were born in an ineligible country where neither of your parent was born or residing at the time of your birth, you may be able to claim one of their countries of birth.
To enter the lottery, you must meet either the education or work experience requirement of the DV program. You 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.
