DV Lottery: New changes require that applicant owns a passport; and it’s for the better

You could be one of the regular applicants who are not winning the US DV Lottery because someone who has access to your data has been registering you unknowingly every year to cause a double entry, one of the grounds for being disqualified in the program.

The US federal government has announced changes to the popular Diversity Visa Lottery program which gives green cards to 50,000 foreigners each year.

In the new reform, foreigners or people who wish to take part in the lottery must first and foremost possess valid and unexpired national passports of their countries without which they cannot take part in the lottery. Applicants would be required to enter their passport details as part of the registration process. This is to leave people who register others without their consent with no option than to stop since they wouldn’t have access to their passport details.

According to the Department, the new rule has become necessary due to the high number of fraudulent practices in the application process, usually carried out by organizations who apply on behalf of people and sometimes without the people’s knowledge or consent and end up charging them a fee when they are selected. The new rule aims to curb this practice and ensure that individuals enter the draw themselves and halt the fraudulent activities of such organisations.

The new requirement takes effect from DV 2021 which will begin at a date yet to be announced, probably in October 2019. Get your passports ready if you intend participating in DV 2021.