What Is the Diversity Visa Lottery That Trump Suspended?

The visa lottery allowed over 50,000 people from underrepresented countries to immigrate to the United States every year, with no merit-based requirements.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joins an ICE team during an enforcement action in New York City on Jan. 28, 2025. ICE via Getty Images

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joins an ICE team during an enforcement action in New York City on Jan. 28, 2025. ICE via Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Dec. 18 ordered the suspension of the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, the same program that granted entry to the United States to the suspect in a recent mass shooting at Brown University.

A citizen of Portugal, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, on Dec. 13, allegedly shot and killed two students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and then, on Dec. 15, allegedly shot and killed a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in his home, according to prosecutors.

“The Brown University shooter ... entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” wrote Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on social media on Dec. 18.

“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)] to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”

Ending the program could significantly reduce legal immigration to the United States, but Noem’s post calls for a pause.

Below is what we know about the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, why officials have called for its suspension, and what consequences this decision may have on immigration.

How the Program Works

The program was created by the Immigration Act of 1990, which established several new avenues of legal immigration to the United States. Among them, the diversity visa allowed for nationals of certain countries with low rates of immigration to be granted Lawful Permanent Residency (LPR status, also known as a “Green Card”) to live in the United States.

“In the 1980s, some members of Congress began expressing concern that U.S. legal immigration admissions were skewed in favor of immigrants from Asia and Latin America because of the 1965 amendments [to the Immigration and Nationality Act],” wrote the Congressional Research Service in a 2019 report about the program. “The diversity immigrant category was added ... to stimulate ”new seed“ immigration (i.e., to foster new, more varied migration from other parts of the world),” the report noted.

The program allows for up to 55,000 persons to receive LPR status after entering an annual lottery conducted by the State Department. The winning lots are apportioned across six regions of the world, meaning that each region gets a quota of the 55,000 spots that are filled by candidates from those countries.

A candidate’s geographic apportionment in the lottery is determined by their country of birth, with a few exceptions. Additionally, persons from countries that have sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the last five years are ineligible. This means that persons born in countries with the highest volume of U.S.-bound immigration—Canada, mainland China, India, Mexico, the Philippines, and several Latin American countries—are ineligible.

Candidates pay a nominal fee of $1 to apply and are required only to have either a high school education or two years of work experience in a job that requires two years of training. Registration usually opens in October, the beginning of the new fiscal year, and closes in November, for admissions scheduled in the following fiscal year.

The lottery, which is conducted in May, then selects around 100,000 people for 55,000 slots, on the assumption that many selectees may either decline to pursue LPR status or be ineligible or inadmissible to the United States on other grounds. If a candidate is deemed ineligible, a winning slot is offered to another candidate with the next-highest lottery number from that region.

A winning candidate who is abroad is processed to receive a DV1 Immigrant Visa, after which they may travel to the United States and permanently reside in the country. Winning candidates who are already in the United States—for instance, on a non-immigrant status as students or temporary workers—may apply to USCIS to adjust their status and become LPRs entirely within the country.

When DV1 immigrants arrive, they are subject to no further terms and conditions, unlike many LPRs who immigrate via employment-based routes (conditional on maintaining their jobs for a period) or family-based routes (conditional on a bona fide relationship or marriage). They may live and work freely in the United States.

Like all LPRs, once a DV1 immigrant has resided in the United States for five years, they become eligible for naturalization as U.S. citizens. Spouses and children under age 21—DV2 and DV3 immigrants, respectively—may also be admitted as LPRs with the principal candidate, and are chargeable to the total cap.

Due to its low eligibility requirements for LPR status, which through other routes is often difficult and expensive to obtain, the Diversity Visa lottery attracts an enormous number of candidates. For fiscal 2025, the lottery received 19.9 million applications for 51,350 admissions, with the number being specially reduced below 55,000 by Congress for that year.

The country with the largest number of selectees for fiscal 2025 was Uzbekistan with 5,564. In the past, a plurality of DV1 selectees have been from Africa, with Ethiopia, Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, and Kenya being the most represented countries from that region. From Asia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Uzbekistan have been the home countries of many selectees.

The Suspension

The suspension was first announced by Noem’s social media post.

However, DV1 aliens, before they enter the United States, deal primarily with the State Department, which also administers the lottery process.

When DV1 selectees land, USCIS, which is under the Department of Homeland Security, mails them a Green Card as proof of status. The agency primarily handles “DV6“ applicants, who have won the Diversity Visa Lottery but are already in the United States, and merely adjust their status within the country after the lottery.

The day after Noem’s announcement, USCIS released a policy memorandum that explained the suspension. Under its terms, the agency has placed a “hold” on all applications from Diversity Visa lottery recipients, which includes DV6 adjustments as well as ancillary benefits, such as requests for work permits pending adjustment. The hold means that processing of applications may continue, but a final adjudication will not be made until the agency conducts “a thorough review on a case-by-case basis ” of applicants.

That review process will require applicants to be interviewed in person—or, if already interviewed for adjustment of status, possibly re-interviewed—for screening on “national security, criminal, and related grounds of inadmissibility and deportation.” It will involve screening applicants through the U.S. Government’s Terrorist Screening Dataset to determine whether they are known or suspected terrorists.

National security screenings are already conducted for applicants, though they are usually routine checks through various databases using basic biographical information. The process outlined by the policy memorandum is additional.

Based on the language of the memorandum, a “suspension” of the program has not formally occurred, in that DV6 applicants could theoretically be granted DV adjustments after the review process concludes. USCIS emphasized the “case-by-case basis” of the review, meaning some decisions may be reached before others.

Still, it is inevitable that the process will delay ongoing applications with USCIS.

“Ultimately, [the Department of Homeland Security] has determined that the burden of processing delays that will fall on some applicants is necessary and appropriate in this instance,” the memorandum read.

The State Department issued updated guidelines on Dec. 23 that said the pause in DV visas will allow a review of screening protocols that “will address vulnerabilities in the process.”

“DV applicants may submit visa applications and attend interviews, and the department will continue to schedule applicants for appointments, but no DVs will be issued,” the guidelines said. “No diversity or other visas have been revoked as part of this guidance.”

Some immigration lawyers have reported that consular processing of DV1 selectees has continued, but no final decisions are being made. Instead, they are being placed in a state of “administrative processing,” where a decision is temporarily withheld until more information is provided.

So far, no lawsuit appears to have been filed against the suspension in federal court.

Reasons and Reactions

The administration has justified the suspension on national security grounds, following the shootings in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

“Benefits will not be granted to aliens who advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists or other threats to our national security. Benefits will not be granted to aliens who are a threat to public safety,” wrote USCIS in its memorandum.

In 2017, another Diversity Visa immigrant, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov from Uzbekistan, used a truck to kill eight people in New York City, a terrorist attack inspired by the ISIS terrorist group of Iraq and Syria, for which he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,” wrote Trump on Twitter in 2017, adding that he wanted immigration programs to be “merit based.”

Supporters of the suspension said the Diversity Visa program is dangerous and a bad policy. They said any immigrants admitted to the United States on nonfamily grounds should be merit-based.

“It’s astonishing the Diversity Visa Lottery still exists,” wrote U.S. Tech Workers, an advocate for lowering legal immigration, on social media. “Green Cards are handed out annually by random draw, with eligibility as low as a high school diploma or two years of work experience—standards that invite abuse.”

Republicans in Congress agree.

“The Diversity Lottery is a mockery of our sovereignty. It admits migrants from all over the world based on chance and not merit, making us poorer and less safe,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, on social media.

Supporters of the program say that it ensures a balanced makeup of the U.S. immigrant population. They also say that thwarting the program is unfair to selectees and has poor humanitarian effects.

In 2021, following Trump’s first suspension of immigration to the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) objected.

“[D]iversity visas [belong] to immigrants who earned, via an official lottery, the legal right to come to the United States only to be denied their right by state-sanctioned discrimination,” Torres wrote on Twitter.

One expert pointed out that although the diversity lottery’s requirements may be minimal, many selectees come highly qualified.

“Half of diversity visa holders come to the United States with a college degree,” wrote Julia Gelatt, associate director of the Migration Policy Institute. “These highly skilled individuals arrive despite the fact the program is not set up to reward merit.”

Tim Hirschel-Burns, an attorney and global economics expert at Boston University, noted that the program is “widely celebrated abroad.”

“[E]ach October, when the visa lottery’s registration window opens, banners are draped over fences around the world, WhatsApp messages circulate with unusual fervor, and millions of people dream that this lottery will grant them the good fortune that the lottery of birth denied to them,” he wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.