2003 Press Releases

Register for U.S. Diversity Visas Starting November 1st

September 24, 2003

Freetown, Sierra Leone
Contact: PAO Kevin Green

The U.S. Diversity Visa lottery program will begin on November 1st.  Effective this year, all applicants who register to participate must do so electronically through a designated Internet website, www.dvlottery.state.gov.  Applicants may access the website between Saturday, November 1, 2003, and Tuesday, December 30, 2003, to fill out the electronic diversity visa entry form. 

PLEASE NOTE THAT PAPER ENTRIES AND MAIL-IN REQUESTS FOR DIVERSITY VISA REGISTRATION WILL NO LONGER BE ACCEPTED.

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program is administered on an annual basis by the Department of State and makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States, like Sierra Leone.  The annual DV program makes permanent residence visas available to persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. Applicants for Diversity Visas are chosen by a computer-generated random lottery drawing.  The visas, however, are distributed among six geographic regions with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and with no visas going to citizens of countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the past five years. Within each region, no one country may receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.

For further details on United States Visas in general, interested persons may visit the Visa website at www.unitedstatesvisas.gov