One of the requirements for the Green Card Lottery is that a person be from a country that does not send many immigrants to the U.S. from year to year.
This list of countries is called the list of designated countries of origin and is re-assessed every year.
The immigration numbers from all countries over the five years previous to the Green Card Lottery are considered. Countries with high volumes of immigrants coming to the U.S. are placed on the list of designated countries.
Below are the countries which have never been eligible for the Green Card Lottery:
- Canada
- China*
- Dominican Republic
- El Salvador
- Haiti
- India
- Jamaica
- Mexico
- Philippines
- South Korea
- Taiwan
- The United Kingdom*
- Vietnam
There are a number of countries which have passed in and out of the list of designated countries such as Columbia, Poland, Russia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala and Eastern European countries such as Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo.
The State Department has not yet released the list of designated countries of origin for the DV-2015 (the name of the Green Card Lottery that will hold its registration period in 2013). However, the list is expected to be released, along with the registration start dates, sometime in September.
The new designated countries of origin are not expected to be much different from those selected in 2014, which were:
- Bangladesh
- Brazil
- Canada
- China*
- Colombia
- The Dominican Republic
- Ecuador
- El Salvador
- Haiti
- India
- Jamaica
- Mexico
- Pakistan
- Peru
- The Philippines
- South Korea
- The United Kingdom
- And Vietnam
Nigeria has also been tentatively added to the list for DV-2015 because of its recent immigration numbers to the U.S.
*Dependent territories of the UK, Northern Ireland and offshore possessions of China are not included in this these lists and remain eligible.