Indians Ineligible For US Green Card Lottery Through DV-2028: Why India Is Excluded, Other Green Card Options? | World News
Indian citizens are not eligible to participate in the United States’ annual Diversity Visa (DV) lottery for the next cycle, a program popularly referred to as the Green Card Lottery, and will likely not be able to apply until at least 2028.
The exclusion is due to the high number of legal immigrants from India to the United States in recent years who have exceeded the program’s legal limit.
Increasing Volume of Migration Leads to Exclusion
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The Diversity Visa program aims to diversify America’s immigrant population by selecting applicants from countries with historically low numbers of immigrants to the United States.
To qualify, a country must have sent fewer than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the last five years. India has never fallen below this figure and hence was automatically excluded from the lottery.
Important Statistics: Indian immigration statistics show a huge number of 93,450 Indians being granted legal permanent resident status in 2021, 127,010 in 2022 and 78,070 in 2023.
Worldwide Comparison: The total of Indian immigrants in 2022 (127,010) exceeded the total of immigrants from the entire South America (99,030), Africa (89,570) or Europe (75,610) for the same year.
Looking at these cumulative totals, it has been determined that Indian citizens are currently ineligible for the DV lottery for the DV-2028 cycle.
Other Countries and Restricted Routes
India, China, South Korea, Canada and Pakistan are among other countries banned from the DV lottery for the next DV-2026 cycle due to high immigration rates. The latest visa allocations for qualifying countries were reported on Wednesday.
With the lottery route unavailable, Indians with hopes of permanent residence in the US are forced to rely on more traditional and often cumulated immigration channels:
- Employment-Oriented Visas (e.g. H-1B conversion to Green Card)
- Family Sponsorship
- Investment Oriented Immigration
- Asylum
Immigration Crackdown Narrows Options
The difficulty of obtaining permanent residency is compounded by the Trump administration’s hardline approach to immigration. Immigration analysts say the toughening policies have closed nearly all available channels for applicants and caused concern among employers.
Recent State Department guidelines have strengthened the strict approach, particularly on student visas, by increasing scrutiny through social media and extending background checks. Diplomats abroad are instructed to keep an eye on potentially hostile applicants, such as those who “advocate, assist, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to national security, or engage in unlawful anti-Semitic harassment or violence.”
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