dv lottery 2012

dv lottery 2012

USA GREEN CARD LOTTERY DV-2012?

I am wanting to immigrate to the USA by applying for the DV-2012 Visa Lottery Program. I am from Australia and will be 22 years old, female, unmarried with no children when I apply (I meet the eligibility requirements for education). I know it is a ‘lottery’ and selections are made at random, but does anyone know what sort of a chance I have? I can’t seem to find any websites giving the number of applicants vs the number of visas granted for Australia (though other countries have these statistics) I heard somewhere that more “green cards” are made available to countries with low immigration rates, and from my research there are never really more than 1000 immigrants from Australia each year (don’t hold me to that, I have no idea how legit these websites are). I am applying with a friend (separate visas etc) and we would really like to know our chances of getting one of these green cards.

There are only 50,000 visas available and they are distributed over 6 regions with each region being allocated different numbers of visas. Africa and Europe currently get around 80% of the 50,000 with the remainder being split over the other 4 regions and Oceania usually gets something between 750 and 1750 in total so that’s not many to go around the whole region. In DV-2010, 705 visas were issued to people from Australia and 1098 in total to Oceania.
http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types_4574.html

Are you aware that the official website won’t open until October and that entry is free of charge? Any website that is inviting applications now is a scam. If you lodge more than 1 application in a given year, you will be barred altogether from the lottery for that year so if you’ve already lodged an application through one of the scam websites, that’s it – you can’t lodge one with the official site when it opens just in case the scammers actually submit your application when able to do so.
http://www.dvlottery.state.gov/ The official site.