Green Card Lottery - Eligibility criteria for participation

The Green Card Lottery is familiarly known as the American Green Card Lottery or the Diversity Visa Lottery Program.It is a gateway for aspiring people from eligible countries to live,work and study in the land of dreams. In other words, Diversity Lottery promotes diversity in the United States and people across the world to fulfill their dreams and also to get the Permanent Resident status. Green Card holders not only receive health, education, and other rights, but they can sponsor relatives for Green Card as well.

Having such manifold advantages, one will definitely try their luck in participating in the Green Card Lottery. Well, to find out if you are lucky or not, you will have to meet certain eligibilty criteria to participate in the Lottery.

There are two major criteria to participate. Firstly, an individual must be a native of a qualifying country, Secondly an individual must meet the educational or the training requirements. To be more specific about the eligibility requirement ,

You must be a native of a qualifying country
When we talk about native of a qualifying country it refers to the country in which you were born though you may be residing in a different country. If your country of birth does not appear on the list of eligible countries, you can register through your spouse's country of birth provided your spouse is from an eligible country
OR
If one of your parents was born in an eligible country, then you can claim your parent's country of birth.To be more specific, if you were born in a country whose natives are ineligible, but neither of your parents was born there or resided there at the time of your birth, then you can claim eligibility through one of your parents country of birth, provided the natives qualify for the Lottery Program.

You must meet the educational and training requirements
Every applicant must have either a high school education or its equivalent, defined as successful completion of a 12-year course of elementary and secondary education; OR
Two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation requiring at least
two years of training or experience .To find out or determine the work experience the
U.S.Department of labor's O*Net OnLine database will be used.

Applicants who do not meet the above requirements will not be able to submit any entry in the Diversity Visa Program.

The theory behind the Lottery Program is to unfold U.S. to a wide category of ideas and cultures by bringing people from across the world. This program is conducted every year and 50,000 visas are granted to the people all around the world and all 50,000 Winners are issued a US Green Card authorizing them and their families to live and work in the United States.

The Green Card Holder is not only eligible to work but has all the rights provided by the US with an exception of the voting right. Further, they have the option of applying for citizenship as well in the later stages after maintaining the residence requirements.Isn't this a great opportunity? Green Card Lottery is after all a matter of chance and why not try your luck!