The Diversity Visa program, also known as the Visa Lottery, randomly selects 50,000 people to obtain a permanent resident visa. These people must belong to countries whose rate of immigration to the country is low.

For its part, Mexico cannot participate in this program, since it has the largest number of immigrants in the United States, with around 36 million people. Other non-eligible countries within Latin America are El Salvador, the Dominican Republic or Colombia, Brazil, Honduras or Guatemala, since they also have high migration rates. However, each year the list may exclude or include new countries.

The visas are distributed in six geographic regions and citizens of countries that have sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the last five years are excluded from the program. Thus, countries that are not eligible must reduce migration rates considerably in order to be considered.

In this sense, the program creates a new category of immigrants called “diversification immigrants” or “diversity visa immigrants”. The Department of State issues 50,000 permanent resident visas each year to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. No country will be able to receive more than 7% of the available visas.