The delay in sending out notifications this year gave rise to many rumors about the discontinuation of the program. One can assume that it was caused by several circumstances. First, the Kentucky Consular Center (KCC), which conducts the lottery, had to correct errors made in preparing winning notifications and resend new packages to natives of Africa. Since winners are notified according to the alphabetical list of geographical regions of which they are natives, the notification deadlines for lottery participants from Europe could have been shifted.
In addition, the delay could have been caused by the need for additional verification of selected applications. It is known that attempts to compare photographs of lottery participants using special software began in 1999. Last fall, the U.S. State Department signed a contract with the creators of a unique program that allows up to 20 million photographs to be entered into a database and checked almost instantly. Such measures are designed to detect individuals who sent more than one application to participate in the lottery, as well as those who pose a threat to U.S. security.
The envelopes received by winners contain a winning notification that confirms their selection in the lottery and indicates the personal number assigned to the winner's case (case number). In addition, winners received instructions detailing how to fill out immigration forms, the process of collecting and translating the necessary documents, as well as information about procedures for applying for immigration visas. These materials include blank U.S. State Department immigration forms (DS-230 Part I and Part II) for each family member of the winner who was listed in their lottery application. The principal applicant (i.e., the winner whose photo appears on the winning notification) is also required to fill out an additional immigration form (DSP-122).
A U.S. State Department press release on the results of last year's Diversity Visa Program (DV-2004), which contains statistical information about its participants, was published last week. As it states, a total of 7.3 million applications were admitted to the lottery. In addition, about 3 million more applications did not participate in the drawing. The fact that almost 40% of all applications were not even admitted to the drawing indicates that approximately every second lottery applicant did not follow the instructions for participating in the program - since even a violation of the rules for filling out and sending applications can lead to disqualification at this stage.
Of the applications admitted to the drawing, the KCC selected nearly 111,000 winners (including family members), who became eligible to apply for immigration visas at U.S. consulates or adjust to immigrant status while already in the United States. For comparison, in the previous lottery (DV-2003) only 87,000 people were selected. Knowing that the State Department selects a larger number of applications to ensure that the visa quota allocated for the lottery (50,000) will be fully used, one can conclude that last year many winners either deliberately did not apply for visas or were unable to obtain them due to subsequent disqualification by the Kentucky Consular Center or denials at consulates, which is why a significantly larger number of winners were selected this year. It should also be noted that about half of the selected winners are natives of Africa.
The total number of winners who are natives of Ukraine is 4,494 people this year. Although the number of winners increased compared to the previous lottery (4,035 people), Ukraine has noticeably lost its position: if last year we were fourth in the world in number of winners, this year we have dropped to eighth. The top ten countries are as follows: Nigeria (7,145), Ghana (7,040), Ethiopia (6,353), Kenya (5,721), Poland (5,467), Bangladesh (5,126), Morocco (5,069), Ukraine (4,494), Nepal (4,259), and Egypt (4,189).
Since there are no quotas for 'distributing' wins to natives of individual countries, such statistics once again confirm that mass participation of natives of a particular country in the Green Card lottery indicates an unstable economic or political situation within the state. Even countries with small populations set peculiar records: for example, according to State Department data, previously every fourth native of Fiji participated in the Diversity Visa Program, and this year Bulgaria (3,482 people) and Albania (3,071 people) significantly outpaced Russia (2,600 people) in the number of winners.
As the State Department has repeatedly stated, only receiving a winning notification from the KCC confirms that you were selected in the lottery. Since the list of winners is not published, there are no other ways to find out the result of your participation in the program. The relatively small staff of the KCC is unable to answer phone calls and written inquiries from everyone who wants to know the fate of their submitted application.
Nevertheless, there is still a small chance of receiving a winning notification. The fact is that even after the mailing of notifications has ended, the KCC continues to verify selected applications and, in the event of disqualification of a significant number of winners, may conduct an additional selection. In particular, a similar situation was observed last year.
Those who did not win the lottery will be able to participate in the upcoming DV-2005 lottery. More detailed information about the timing and participation rules will appear in August and will be published on the pages of our newspaper.
Alexander DEMCHENKO,
Chicago, USA.
Specially for Zagranitsa