US Green Card Lottery Period for Fiscal Year 2019 Now Open, Closes November 7th

The US Diversity Visa Program for the fiscal year 2019 (DV-2019), popularly known as Green Card Lottery began at noon today (Tuesday, October 3rd) and closes at noon on Tuesday, November 7, 2017.

Administrated by the Department of State, the lottery program makes 55,000 permanent resident visas (green cards) available to national of countries with historically low number of immigrants in the United States.

Kenya is one such country whose citizens qualify to participate in the visa lottery program.

To qualify for a Diversity Visa,  an applicant must be a national of a qualifying country and have either completed high school education or have worked in a qualifying occupation for at least two years. Anyone who does not meet this minimum criteria is urged not to submit an application, as they will NOT be issued with a permanent resident visa.

Full eligibility criteria as well as instructions are available here.

There is no cost to register participate in the lottery.

Applications  are only accepted online at the Department of State website.

Winners of the DV-2019 lottery program will be eligible to migrate to the United States starting in January, 2019 after passing through mandatory interviews at the US embassies located in their home countries.

The Trump administration has mulled at eliminating the lottery program, so the future of the program is unknown.