Registering for this year’s DV-Lottery: An update

By R. Mark Frey

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece in Asian American Press about this year’s DV-Lottery Program. I noted that the program is administered by the Department of State with 50,000 immigrant visas set aside for those selected through the lottery process each year. The visas are distributed by region (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania as well as South and Central America and the Caribbean) with more visas allotted to those areas that sent fewer immigrants to the United States through Family-Sponsored and Employment-Based visa processing during the previous five years. 

This year’s DV-Lottery registration period was slated to begin on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017 and end on Nov. 7, 2017. Due to some technical glitches in the system, the Department of State recently announced some revisions in the program. It noted that the current registration period is now closed and those entries successfully submitted for the DV-Lottery between Oct. 3 and Oct. 10 are no longer valid and have been eliminated from the system, effectively voiding all entries made during this initial registration period. Given the technical glitches and lost time, the Department of State has declared that a new registration period will commence at noon (U.S. Eastern Daylight Time) on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017 and run until noon (Eastern Standard Time) on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2017. As previously stated, the entries submitted in the initial registration period are no longer valid and only those submitted during this new registration period will be accepted. Those who previously submitted an entry must file again. All other aspects of the DV-Lottery Program remain the same.

Additional information about this development and the registration process may be found at the Department of State’s DV-Lottery website located at https://www.dvlottery.state.gov.

R. Mark Frey is a St. Paul, Minnesota attorney who has practiced immigration law exclusively for more than 25 years with an emphasis on asylum and other forms of humanitarian relief, family and marriage-based immigration, naturalization, removal defense, appeals, religious workers, and H-1B, L, and E-2 visas.