The National Visa Center at Portsmouth, New Hampshire has registered and notified the winners of the DV-2000 diversity lottery. The diversity lottery was conducted under the terms of Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and makes available *50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

Approximately 110,000 applicants have been registered and notified and may now make an application for an immigrant visa. Since it is likely that some of the first *50,000 persons registered will not pursue their cases to visa issuance, this larger figure should insure that all DV-2000 numbers will be used during fiscal year 2000 (October 1, 1999 until September 30, 2000).

Applicants registered for the DV-2000 program were selected at random from the more than 8 million qualified entries received during the one-month application period which ran from noon on October 1, 1998 through noon on October 31, 1998. Over 2.5 million applications received inside and outside of the mail-in period were disqualified for failing to properly follow directions.

The visas have been apportioned among six geographic regions with a maximum of 3,500 visas available to persons born in any single country. During the visa interview, principal applicants must provide proof of a high school education or its equivalent, or show two years of work experience in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience within the past five years.

Those selected will need to act on their immigrant visa applications quickly.

Applicants should follow the instructions in their notification letter and must fully complete the information requested. Registrants living legally in the United States who wish to apply for adjustment of their status must contact the Immigration and Naturalization Service for information on the requirements and procedures. Once the total *50,000 visa numbers have been used, the program for fiscal year 2000 will end. Selected applicants who donot receive visas by September 30, 2000 will derive no further benefit from their DV-2000 registration. Similarly, spouses and children accompanying or following to join DV-2000 principal applicants are only entitled to derivative DV status until September 30, 2000.

Only participants in the DV-2000 program who were selected for further processing have been notified. Those who have not received notification were not selected and may wish to try for next year's DV-2001 lottery. The dates for the mail-in period for the DV-2001 lottery are scheduled from noon on October 4, 1999 until noon on November 3, 1999. Instructions on entering the DV-2001 program will be widely publicized beginning on August 2, 1999.

*The Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NCARA) passed by Congress in November 1997 stipulated that beginning with DV-99, and for as long as necessary, 5,000 of the 55,000 annually-allocated diversity visas were made available for use under the NCARA program.

The following is the statistical breakdown by foreign state chargeability of those registered for the DV-2000 program:

Natives of the following countries were not eligible to participate in DV-2000: Canada, China (mainland and Taiwan, except Hong Kong S.A.R.), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam.