The entry takes twenty minutes and is easy to void. Eligibility by country and education, photo rules that reject entries, and errors that cost the win.
Reviewed by Ekaterina Fitenko, Esq. — Florida Bar #1064536. With 20+ years of experience in the legal field, she advises Diversity Visa selectees on adjustment of status and consular processing, in English and Russian.
The Diversity Visa program makes a limited number of immigrant visas available each year to people from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. Entry is submitted online to the U.S. Department of State during a registration window that opens in the autumn for a fiscal year roughly two years ahead. The DV-2028 cycle is the one now approaching.
Two things about the entry are worth fixing in your mind before anything else.
It is short. The form asks for name, date and place of birth, country of chargeability, address, education level, marital status, children, and photographs. A prepared applicant finishes in twenty minutes.
It is unforgiving. There is no review stage, no request for evidence, no chance to correct a mistake after submission. An entry that does not comply is simply not selected, and no one tells you why. This asymmetry — trivial to file, impossible to repair — is the reason the rest of this guide exists.
This article covers the entry. For where the currently running DV years stand, how the issuance pause works and how to read the Visa Bulletin for a DV case, see our separate guide to the DV lottery and the Visa Bulletin.
Eligibility begins with a country, and the country is not necessarily where you live, hold citizenship, or have spent your life. It is your country of chargeability, which by default is your country of birth.
Countries that have sent large numbers of immigrants to the United States over the preceding five years are excluded from each cycle. The exclusion list is recalculated annually and does change between cycles — a country ineligible three years ago may be eligible now, and the reverse happens too. Confirm the current list on the official State Department site rather than relying on a list you saw last year, including the one in your own memory.
If your country of birth is excluded, two alternate routes exist, and both are legitimate and commonly used:
These are the only two alternate routes. Residence, citizenship acquired later, ancestry beyond a parent, and length of stay in another country do not create chargeability. This is one of the most common misunderstandings we see, and it usually surfaces after selection, when it is expensive.
Beyond the country, an applicant must satisfy one of two alternatives. Not both.
A completed secondary school education equivalent to a United States twelve-year course of elementary and secondary education. What matters is a full formal course completed successfully — not a certificate of attendance, not vocational equivalency awarded on the basis of experience, and not partial completion followed by later study.
Two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience to perform. The occupation must qualify under the classification the Department of State uses for this purpose; many ordinary jobs do not, and an applicant's own sense of how skilled the work was carries no weight.
The practical consequence: the work route is narrower than it sounds, and applicants who assume they qualify under it — because they have worked for a decade — frequently do not. If the education route is available, it is the safer of the two to rely on.
The entry must list your spouse and every unmarried child under twenty-one, including stepchildren and adopted children, whether or not they intend to immigrate with you, and whether or not they live with you.
Omitting a family member who should have been listed disqualifies the selection. This holds even where the omission was innocent — a child from an earlier relationship, a spouse from whom you are separated but not divorced. The rule is about disclosure, not intention.
Children who are already twenty-one or who are married are not listed, and cannot be added later.
More entries fail on photographs than on any other single requirement, and the failure is silent. The specification is exact and mechanically checked:
The safest approach is a photographer who does United States visa photographs regularly. A phone photograph against a bedroom wall, resized by an app, is the single most common reason a technically eligible applicant is never selected.
Each of these disqualifies an otherwise eligible applicant. None of them generate a warning.
One entry per person per cycle. Submitting twice does not double the odds — it voids every copy, including the correct one. Where a married couple each submits an entry listing the other as spouse, that is two entries and is permitted; it is the same person entering twice that is fatal.
Paid intermediaries who submit for you frequently reuse photographs, mistype names, keep the confirmation number, or file a second entry for a client who has already filed one. The entry is free to submit on the official site; where the Department of State charges a fee in a given cycle, it is a small one collected through official channels.
Names must match the passport exactly, in the same order and spelling, including transliteration. Dates follow the format the form specifies, not the format used in your country.
The confirmation number issued at submission is the only way to check the result. It cannot be recovered by name, email, or date of birth after the fact in the ordinary case. Save it in more than one place, on paper included.
The Department of State does not notify selectees by email. Results are checked by the applicant, using the confirmation number, on the official site. Every message announcing a win and requesting a payment is fraudulent, without exception.
Marital status is stated as of the date of the entry, and any later change must be disclosed during processing. An applicant who marries after entering is not disqualified — one who conceals a marriage is.
Selection means an applicant has been given a case number and may apply for a visa. It is not the visa, and a substantial share of selectees never receive one.
The reason is arithmetic. The Department of State selects considerably more entrants than there are visas available, because it expects a large share to abandon the process, to be found ineligible, or to be reached only after the numbers run out. Case numbers become current in order over the course of the fiscal year, and the year has a hard ending after which unused DV numbers expire and are not carried forward.
What follows selection is a real immigration case: the DS-260 immigrant visa application, civil documents, police certificates, a medical examination, fees, and an interview — or, for an applicant already in the United States in a lawful status, an adjustment of status application instead. A high case number and a slow start are the ordinary way a selection is lost.
A meaningful share of the people we advise on DV cases are already here — on a student visa in Gainesville or Tampa, on an employment status in Miami or Fort Lauderdale, on a pending humanitarian application in Broward County. For them the decision is not only whether to enter, but which path to take after selection.
Two points matter locally.
Adjustment of status can be faster than consular processing, and is not always available. It requires a lawful status maintained at the time of filing and a current case number, and it interacts with the hard end of the fiscal year in ways that punish delay severely. See our guide to adjustment of status versus consular processing.
Entering the lottery does not, by itself, harm another pending case — but it does state an intention to immigrate, which matters for anyone holding a status that requires nonimmigrant intent. If you are on a visa that requires you to intend to depart, discuss the interaction before you enter, not after you are selected.
Filing the entry is not legal work, and we do not charge to file one. There are three moments where representation changes results:
An initial consultation with Fitenko Law is $200 for 30 minutes, in English or Russian. We are at 11555 Heron Bay Blvd, Suite 227, Coral Springs, FL 33076, with a second office in Hallandale Beach, and we can be reached at (305) 315-3425 or fitenkolaw@gmail.com.
The registration window opens in the autumn and typically stays open for about a month. We deliberately do not print dates here, because they shift between cycles and a stale date on a webpage causes people to miss the window. Confirm the current dates on the official Department of State site before relying on any date, including one from us.
Submitting the entry itself is not a service you should pay an agency for. Recent cycles have introduced a small official fee collected through official channels; confirm what applies to the current cycle on the official site. Any site charging a substantial sum to "register" you is selling you something you can do yourself in twenty minutes.
Yes. You may claim your spouse's country of chargeability provided both of you are listed on the entry and you immigrate together. If the marriage ends, or your spouse does not immigrate, the basis for your eligibility ends with it.
Both entries are void, including the correct one, and there is no mechanism to withdraw one and preserve the other. The remedy is to enter once in the following cycle.
Not necessarily. The work route requires two years within the past five in an occupation that is classified as requiring at least two years of training or experience. Length of employment does not substitute for the classification of the occupation, and many long careers do not qualify.
Entering costs nothing and does not create a new problem. Whether the overstay bars a visa later is a separate question that depends on how long it lasted, when it ended and whether you left the country. That question is worth answering before selection, not after.
$200 for 30 minutes, in English or Russian. Call (305) 315-3425 or email fitenkolaw@gmail.com to schedule.
This article is informational only and is not legal advice. Diversity Visa rules, eligible country lists and registration dates change between cycles; confirm current requirements on the official U.S. Department of State site. Reading this page does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Fitenko Law PLLC, 11555 Heron Bay Blvd, Suite 227, Coral Springs, FL 33076 (main office); 600 Three Islands Blvd, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009. Phone: (305) 315-3425. Email: fitenkolaw@gmail.com