The United States has released details of countries whose nationals were not eligible to participate in the 2026 Diversity Visa (DV) programme, popularly known as the Green Card Lottery.
The Diversity Visa programme is designed to provide a pathway to permanent residence in the United States for people from countries with historically low levels of immigration to the country.
For the DV-2026 programme, nationals of 19 countries were excluded from participating. The United States Department of State indicated that the eligibility rules are linked to immigration levels over the preceding five years.
The countries whose nationals were ineligible for the DV-2026 programme were:
- Bangladesh
- Brazil
- Canada
- China, including Hong Kong SAR
- Colombia
- Cuba
- Dominican Republic
- El Salvador
- Haiti
- Honduras
- India
- Jamaica
- Mexico
- Nigeria
- Pakistan
- Philippines
- South Korea
- Venezuela
- Vietnam
Nigeria was the only African country included on the exclusion list. Citizens of other African countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa and Uganda, were represented among the countries eligible for the programme.
Under the programme’s rules, countries can become ineligible when more than 50,000 of their natives have immigrated to the United States during the preceding five-year period. The purpose of the rule is to promote geographic diversity among people receiving Diversity Visas.
The exclusion from the Green Card Lottery does not mean that citizens of the affected countries are generally banned from travelling to or immigrating to the United States. Rather, it means that people born in those countries could not enter the DV-2026 lottery under the programme’s country-of-chargeability rules.
For the DV-2026 programme, more than 20.8 million qualified entries were submitted during the registration period. The Kentucky Consular Center subsequently registered approximately 129,516 prospective applicants, including selected applicants and their eligible spouses and children.
Ghana was among the African countries represented in the DV-2026 programme, with 1,642 prospective applicants recorded in the published figures.
The list of eligible and ineligible countries can change from one Diversity Visa programme year to another, depending on immigration figures and the rules applicable to that particular programme.
Source: Thepressradio.com
