The Diversity Visa lottery, more commonly known as the green card lottery, is a special visa category that provides a path to legal permanent residence in the United States for some applicants. The green card lottery was introduced as a means to provide a path to legal residence for citizens from underrepresented countries. For the DV lottery, many winners are from Sub-Saharan African countries as well as smaller Asian and Oceanic nations.
As of May 7th, the State Department has announced the winners for the 2023 Diversity Visa lottery. In this blog, we will provide some relevant information for how applicants can check to see if their name has been drawn for next year’s selection process.
State Department Status Check
Remember that the DV lottery is primarily run by the State Department, so the first thing you need to do if you are planning on checking your status is to have your confirmation number ready. If you are wondering what this confirmation number is referring to—this is the number you received when you entered yourself into the DV lottery in the previous year. For example, the DV-2023 registration period opened on October 6, 2021, and closes on November 9, 2021. If you remember filling out, and registering yourself into the DV system then, and received a confirmation number in November, 2021, then you should be able to check currently if you have “won” in the green card lottery for 2023.
First Steps
If you have registered and have been waiting for the State Department to announce the winners for DV-2023, now is the time to go to the following link and type in your confirmation number: https://dvprogram.state.gov/. If you have lost your confirmation number, hit the “Forget Confirmation Number” link, which will re-locate you to another field of questions in order to authenticate your identity. These will be sensitive questions that only you should be able to answer, based on the information you provided when you initially submitted an Electronic Diversity Visa Entry Form.
Remember that based on U.S. immigration law, being selected in the DV lottery does not guaranteed that you will receive a green card, and also you should note that the State Department does not reach out to applicants via email or phone, so the only to check to see if you have been selected in the DV-2023 lottery is through the DV Entrant Status check link on their website.
If you have been selected, it is important to start the process of paying State Department fees and filling out a DS-260 as soon as possible, as all of the DVs available have a cutoff date of September 30th, 2023.
If you are already in the United States, and you have been selected in the DV-2023 lottery, you might also be eligible for an AOS based on your current immigration status. Be sure to confirm this information with one of our immigration professionals.
