Each year, the U.S. Diversity Visa program (Green Card Lottery) makes available permanent residence visas to persons meeting the eligibility requirements. Applicants for Diversity Visas are initially chosen through a random computer-generated lottery drawing. Visas are distributed among six geographic regions with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and no visas going to countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the past five years. No one country can receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.
The year 2003 Green Card Lottery program is called DV2005 because permanent residence visas under this
program will be issued in fiscal year 2005. The U.S. State Department's fiscal year
2005 is the period
that begins October 1st 2004 and ends September 30th 2005. DV stands for "Diversity Visa" and
the number 2005 for the fiscal year 2005.