Green Card Lottery The Green Card lottery or Diversity immigrant visa Lottery, is a visa drawing program that, if successful, entitles the winner to obtain permanent resident status in the United States of America. For many, such a lottery is the only chance to move from a disadvantaged region to the United States. However, in addition to the strict selection of participants and a rather small chance of winning, there are also various restrictions on participation, below we will consider them. The main selection criterion is the geographical principle: all Green Card visas are divided between six geographical regions, according to the principle, the lower the level of immigration, the more visas are allocated to a given region. For countries whose natives have exceeded the US immigration limit in the past five years, they do not participate in the lottery. Within each region, no state will receive more than seven percent of visas in one year. Other requirements for participants are edu