The number of Turkmen citizens applying for the Green Card has increased by 5.7 times from 2013 to 2022.
Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (Green Card Lottery) is a program for citizens of foreign countries to obtain the right for permanent residence in America. Every year the US government allocates 50,000 immigrant visas among six geographic regions, proportionally to their population. It excludes countries that have sent more than 50,000 immigrants in the previous five years. There is no quota per country and applicants from the same region are selected randomly as a whole, for the number of visas allocated for that region. However, no single country may receive more than 7% of the total diversity visas (3,850) in a given year.
In 2022 out of 7.3 million entries globally only 1.6% applicants were randomly selected. However, random selection only means the person becomes eligible to participate in the program and may apply for a visa. It does not guarantee the applicant will get the visa. To illustrate, in 2022 out of 745 applicants who were randomly selected from Turkmenistan, only 547 received an immigrant visa to the US (see the chart below).
The number of Turkmen citizens who have applied, been selected and received visas for the Diversity Visa Program, 2013-2022
Source: U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Consular Affairs.
Note: Since the data for the number of online entries received in 2022 has not been reported yet, we used the average for the previous two years in 2020 and 2021. The graph was developed by Progres Foundation using the data from the US Department of State.
