No passport is needed to take part in the Diversity Visa Lottery anymore!

No passport? Don’t be deterred from taking part in the DV Lottery, as the new rules do not require you to specify your passport number.

In February 2022, a US federal judge demolished the passport requirement for Green Card Lottery. You do not need a valid passport to submit your entry.

The necessity of having a passport has reduced the number of applicants by half. Now applicants are free from this burden.

Table of contents

• Initially, no passport was needed
• Past Green Card lottery passport requirements
• The new DV Lottery passport rules (it is no longer needed)
• So do I still need my passport in the Green card lottery?
• Get your DV Lottery photo online now!

Initially, no passport was needed

In all years before 2019, no passport was required for the DV lottery program. The form consisted of 14 questions only, and for each of them, you could answer without using any documents.

After that, the Trump administration decided to raise the entry threshold by adding the passport data question. Also, fraud must have been prevented as third parties seldom know passport data.

Past Green Card lottery passport requirements

A passport was necessary for three years: DV 2021, held in 2019; DV 2022, held in 2020; DV 2023, in 2021. It was meant to provide security and protect your entry. First, you applied for a passport, and only after that, could you submit your form.

Since 2019 you have been required to have a valid passport number and put it on your form. Your passport should be valid during the entry period. If your country issues internal passports, you cannot use them as the passport must entitle you to international travel.

But you could not provide your passport data if you could not do so at all. There were only three exceptions:

1. Stateless people
2. People from communist countries who are unable to get a passport
3. beneficiaries of individual waivers approved by the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of State

Only the principal applicant was obliged to have a passport; his/her spouse and children did not. But if your spouse makes his/her separate entry, he/she needs one as the principal applicant in this case. But your children could be without any passport.

If you stated that you could not have a passport when you actually could, or your passport was expired or somehow invalid, it was grounds for disqualification.

If you changed your passport after the entry and you were selected before the interview, you were obliged to provide evidence of why you have another document. If it turned out that you originally provided a false passport, you were disqualified.

The new DV Lottery passport rules (it is no longer needed)

Don’t you have a passport because you do not travel abroad, or can you cross borders without one (like in the EU)? Do not hurry to apply for one just before the lottery if it costs a lot, it is hard to get one due to bureaucratic issues.

The DV 2024 form consists only of 14 questions in the same way as was in 2018 for DV 2020.

They are:

1. Name
2. Gender
3. Birth date
4. City where you were born
5. Country where you were born
6. Country of Eligibility for the DV program
7. Entrant Photograph
8. Mailing Address
9. Country Where you live today
10. Phone number (optional)
11. E-mail address
12. What is the highest level of education you have achieved as of today?
13. What is your current marital status?
14. Number of Children

The passport requirement was sued. The federal judge stated that the passport requirement was added unlawfully because it skipped the public comment period. Thus it was abolished.

The passport data was meant to reduce fraudulent entries and prevent companies from submitting data of lots of their former clients. Third parties usually do not have passport data. The true identity of applicants was verified much better.

No passport? Fill in your form now before the entry period closes on November 8.

So do I still need my passport in the Green card lottery?

It is unlikely that the passport rule will be back.

There are several ways you can benefit from still having a valid passport when applying.

1. Name. You need to spell it exactly as it is in your passport. If the alphabet in your native language differs from the Latin one, there are actually several ways of writing it. And if you have never had a passport, you do not even know it could be transliterated. But if you have an expired one,
2. City of birth. Born in a village, and you don’t know what to write in the Birth city question? Look into your passport! What birth city does your passport state? Write it down! "No city, only birth country," says your passport. Tick the Birth city unknown box! Do not worry if your birth certificate has another birthplace. When you are abroad or going to cross the border, foreign authorities want to know only your passport information, they do not care about your birth certificate or any other domestic documents.
3. You are the winner. When selected, it is better to have a ready passport containing precisely the same data as in your DV lottery form. And you will have lots of tasks like submitting the DS-260 form and so on. Why do you need an additional one when applying for a passport? Where your name spelling and city of birth may differ, and an immigration officer may find that suspicious. Of course, you can explain that it was like that in your expired passport and show it or a valid copy, but it is still tricky.

Get your DV Lottery photo online now!

One requirement for the Green Card Lottery remains unchanged: a correct photo that meets the standards. To instantly get a DV Lottery photo online, simply upload any portrait of yourself taken from a full-face perspective. Before uploading, make sure the photo meets the requirements listed in this article.

Visafoto will instantly convert your picture to a compliant Green Card Lottery photo: crop it to the correct size, set the format, and adjust the background. The resulting image can be immediately attached to your DV Lottery entry form.

Here is a sample of your original photo (selfie):

Here is a green card lottery photo example that you get:

Good luck with your entry!