What's behind this greencard lotery stuff ?

the message isn't flashing so i guess i'm not eligible...?

i got it once too, and im from Holland. Needless to say, the message wasnt very attractive for me

sweet! a chance to waste money!!

My parents won the "green card lottery" back in '95. All you have to do is send in paper work to the American Immigration services, although its easier to just do it online now. Theres also a better chance of winning if your married and have a marketable job skill. Anyway I've lived in the states a little over ten years now, and I just got my American citizenship in April, so no more green card for me

http://www.usagcls.com/ <--link to the lottery registration info

I don't think the American goverment is spending money on that advertising, kinda like those stupid "If this sign is flashing you've won a free xbox 360" banners.....I"m pretty sure thats not Microsoft's advertising dollars at work. And i wouldn't say its that they (consulate officers) don't like you or like refusing Brazilian visas, maybe there are a higher number of applications coming from brazil than anywhere else(which i believe there are) in turn would lead to a higher refusal rate

DV Lottery Instructions

The congressionally mandated Diversity Immigrant Visa Program is administered on an annual basis by the Department of State and conducted under the terms of Section 203© of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Section 131 of the Immigration Act of 1990 (Pub. L. 101-649) amended INA 203 to provide for a new class of immigrants known as "diversity immigrants" (DV immigrants). The Act makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

The annual DV program makes permanent residence visas available to persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. Applicants for Diversity Visas are chosen by a computer-generated random lottery drawing. The visas, however, are distributed among six geographic regions with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and with no visas going to citizens of countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the past five years. Within each region, no one country may receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.

For DV-2007, natives of the following countries are not eligible to apply because they sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years:

CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, POLAND, RUSSIA, SOUTH KOREA, UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and VIETNAM. Persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible.

[Blocked Image: http://www.prb.org/images/e-06(regional_origins).gif]