Why Nigeria is excluded from U.S. visa lottery, by envoy

Amid conflicting reports on the reasons for United States of America’s disqualification of Nigeria from the 2015 Diversity Visa (DV) programme for immigrants, the embassy has said that the decision was based on laid-down laws guiding the programme.

Also, an analysis of entries showed that the U.S. embassy in Nigeria has never received any same-sex marriage application for the DV lottery programme as Nigerian laws do not recognise such union.

Consul-General, U.S. Consulate in Lagos, Jeffrey Hawkins told journalists via a tele-conference yesterday that, “the DV programme is no longer appropriate for Nigeria as Nigerians are now immigrating on their own (to the U.S.) without the DV status.”

He stressed that as long as countries like Nigeria exceed its immigration quota of 50,000 immigrants that it is unlikely to be re-considered for the DV programme.

Hawkins explained that in the DV-2015, natives of the 19 identified countries are not eligible to apply in the electronically-based registration programme, which starts October 1st, 2013 and ends November 2nd same year because the countries sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years.

The envoy said, “Nigeria has graduated. The immigration we have from Nigeria has been strong, we have an incredible diverse and successful Nigerian-American community in the U.S.”

He said about a million and half Nigerians are legitimately in the U.S. and that 9,200 visas were issued to Nigerians as of this year with about 6,500 of this visas issued in the normal visa category.

Other countries not eligible for the DV-2015 include Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, India and Jamaica. Other countries affected include Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories and Vietnam.

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