Number of green card lottery entrants from Turkey rises 49 percent in two years
ISTANBUL
The number of entries from Turkey for the green card lottery, officially known as the Diversity Visa (DV) lottery, increased to 204,729 in 2018 from 137,146 in 2016, data from the United States Department of State shows.
The corresponding figure was 170,370 in 2017.
Including derivatives, the total number of applicants from Turkey stood at 406,929 this year versus 316,226 in 2017 and up from 245,493 in 2016.
Under the DV-2017 program, 2,186 people from Turkey won the lottery. This figure increased to 4,390 under the DV-2018 lottery, while as for the DV-2016 program the corresponding number was 1,795.
According to the information on the U.S. Department of State’s website, applicants registered for the DV-2018 program were selected at random from 14,692,258 qualified entries (23,088,613 with derivatives).
The State Department reported a total of 12,437,190 qualified entries (19,344,586 with derivatives) for the DV-2017 program.
The U.S. Government makes 50,000 diversity visas or “green cards” available each year.
