The US State Department yesterday, May 7th 2019, released the results of 2020 Diversity Visa Program (DV-2020), also known as the Green Card Lottery.
The results are only available online at a portal run by the State Department.
Between yesterday evening and today (May 8th), the website (https://dvlottery.state.gov) has been inaccessible to many who participated in the lottery during the open registration period last year, leaving a lot of individuals wondering whether they are winners.
An official from the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, which runs the Diversity Visa program, says the problem has been caused by servers being overwhelmed by high traffic and urges those unable to access the website to check back later.
“[The] servers are continuing to experience high volume, and many users are having difficulty reaching the site. We encourage DV2020 entrants to check back later if they are unable to access the site,” said the official on Wednesday.
The DV-2020 lottery registration period began on October 3rd, 2018 and ended on November 6th, 2018.
The US State Department will begin procession visas and conducting interviews for the eventual winners starting in October, 2019, with those who pass the interviews, background checks and other qualifications such as high school education and/or work experience being granted permanent resident visas.
The Diversity Visa Program makes 55,000 permanent residency visas available through a lottery drawing to nationalities of countries with low numbers of immigrants to the United States over the previous five years.
Kenya is one of the countries whose nationals qualified to participate in the DV-2020 lottery.
A total of 5,263 Kenyan nationals were granted permanent resident status (green cards) in the first three quarters of 2018, newly released data from the United States Department of Homeland Security indicates.
The number includes 2,934 individuals already living in the United States who adjusted their status and 2,329 new arrivals, and comprises all classes of admission including diversity visas/green card lottery winners, immediate relatives of US citizens, family-sponsored preferences, employment-based preferences, and asylees.
6,957 and 6,274 Kenyans were granted permanent resident status in 2017 and 2016 respectively by the US Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS).
In 2018, nationals from 17 countries were ineligible to participate in the program for having a large number of immigrants in the US.
These included Bangladesh, India, China, Canada, Mexico, Jamaica, and Nigeria.
The next registration period (DV-2021) is expected to run between October and November, 2019.
Those selected in the DV-2020 program participated during the open registration which took place between October 3rd and November 6th, 2018.