BY DANIEL SHOER ROTH | Miami Herald
The 2021 visa lottery winners have been announced. Egypt, Iran and Russia top the list
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs published its Visa Bulletin for September 2020, announcing the results for fiscal year 2021 of the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which makes available up to 55,000 permanent resident visas, known as green cards, each year.
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The 2021 visa lottery winners were drawn from random selection by computer from among 6,741,128 qualified entries from around the world — or 11,830,707 foreign nationals including family members or “derivatives” of principal applicants — received during the 35-day enrollment period last year, federal authorities said.
The number of applicants was substantially lower than last year’s DV-2020 diversity lottery, when the department received over 14 million qualified entries, or more than 23 million including family members.
That’s because fewer people were eligible to apply due to a program rule changed last year to curb fraudulent enrollments.
For the first time since the program was established 30 years ago to boost immigration to the United States from countries with historically low rates of immigration, this fiscal year foreigners were required to have a valid, unexpired passport, to be able to submit the entry form electronically. Previously, prospective immigrants didn’t need a valid passport to register for the drawing.
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DIVERSITY VISA LOTTERY 2021 RESULTS
According to the department, the immigrant visas — which allow immigrants to live and work legally and permanently in the United States — were distributed among six geographic regions “with a maximum of seven percent available to persons born in any single country.”
The department published in its latest bulletin this week the official statistical breakdown by country for fiscal year 2021.
Here are the 15 countries that most benefited from the program and the number of applicants selected:
▪ Egypt — 6,002
▪ Iran — 6,001
▪ Russia — 6,001
▪ Algeria — 6,001
▪ Sudan — 6,001
▪ Ukraine — 5,604
▪ Uzbekistan — 5,319
▪ Democratic Republic of Congo — 4,503
▪ Morocco — 4,458
▪ Albania — 3,962
▪ Ethiopia — 3,957
▪ Nepal — 3,801
▪ Cameroon — 3,686
▪ Ghana — 3,284
▪ Turkey — 2,874
“Approximately 132,404 applicants have been registered and notified and may now make an application for an immigrant visa,” the bulletin explains.
“Since it is likely that some of the first 55,000 persons registered will not pursue their cases to visa issuance, this larger figure should insure that all DV-2021 numbers will be used.”
Read from source Miami Herald