What are the statistical odds in the Green Card Lottery?

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Over 10 million applicants have submitted to join the 2008 green card lottery if we include all dependents in the official count. Technically, over 6.4 million primary applications were sent through the online system. That number is a significant increase from the previous year’s official count of over 5.5 million applications. The growing popularity of this diversity visa lottery has attracted over one million more people in the span of a year even if the statistical odds in the green card lottery for winner hopefuls are significantly low as well.

If we qualify and categorize the incoming applications, most of the statistical odds in the green card lottery are in favor of the majority regions that send in most applications. 41 percent of the submissions originate from Africa, 38 percent from Asia, 19 percent from Europe, and 2 percent from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. The biggest numerical bulk of applications are submitted from Bangladesh which have over 1.7 million. Nigeria has over 690,000 and Ukraine has 620,000 applicants.

Results from the statistical odds in the green card lottery are distributed throughout regions that have minor representation within the United States in the past five years. From the previous lottery draws, almost 80 percent of the lottery winners are drawn from the regions of Africa and Europe. In the random computer generated draw, further restriction is practiced to ensure that not a single country could be awarded more than seven percent of the visas available.

Even the statistical odds in the green card lottery may be in your favor, it still does not guarantee you an immigrant visa. Winners of the lottery are still subject to eligibility qualifications and interviews conducted by the US government in order to be fully awarded one of the 50,000 green cards.

For DV-2010, applications have amounted to over 13.6 million applicants which is almost a 50 percent increase from the previous year’s count of over 9.1 million. Since the first lottery, application requirements are now more detailed and eligibility is further screened in order to justly manage the fast increasing number of hopefuls every year. Because of this rapid growth in number of applicants, statistical odds in the green card lottery are becoming slimmer and slimmer for every individual person. Below is the tabulated breakdown of green card lottery winners for the 2008 draw.

Statistical odds in the green card lottery as shown above are fairly diversified in distribution showing equal opportunity for more minority nations. For DV-2010, green card visas were awarded the most to the countries of Ghana, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Australia and the Bahamas. Africa still holds the highest percentage of winners with 52.63%, and is followed by Europe holding 29.04%. Asia was apportioned 14.62% while South America and the Caribbean has around1.93%. Oceania has 1.76% of the winners and North America holds the smallest percentage of around 0.02% from the total amount.

There is no proven insider tip, or scheme to fundamentally increase your statistical odds in the green card lottery because the draw is randomly generated by a computer program. Although critics have been eager to debate the accuracy of the process, the green card lottery program has been in full operation annually since the year it officially opened.

Many efforts in congress have tried to demolish the diversity immigrant visa lottery in the past years but have not succeeded in having senate approve their requests. It was moved to cut funding for the project but the program still stands running in the recent years. One among the many reasons for the move to abolish the green card lottery is the fear of terrorists being able to infiltrate the country through this mechanism and may in turn do more harm than good in the United States especially after the tragedy of the twin towers and the numerous terrorist scares around the country.