• Hello Members, This forums is for DV lottery visas only. For other immigration related questions, please go to our forums home page, find the related forum and post it there.

Dv2024 winners, its that time of the year again

It's not that unlikely. Depending on your region the chances of winning can easily be 1 in 100 or higher. But I agree everyone should think about anything that could lead to a rejection. Don't use old photos etc.
I agree I think it happens quite often given that the probabilities are as you say are approx 1%. To be completely honest I noticed on wiki that they are even lower, depending on the considered year they are in the order of 0.5% which would imply an expected win every 200 years.

What I think is more likely is that perhaps people stop doing it after this amount of time and either do not apply or simply find other ways to get to the US. Plus I suppose that the data that is found on forums has a lot of survivor ship bias and that most of the people that post are in relation to a win.
 
Curious, what would it mean for you to win the lottery and have you explored alternatives? Have you perhaps tried to see if you are making some mistakes somewhere that could be leading to an auto rejection? It seems too unlucky in my opinion to not win that many times. I only entered three times. The first I was still in high school so maybe I didn't qualify. The second I just chose some random old photo in my gallery. In 2021, I just filled reluctantly as I didn't expect anything but had coincidentally just taken "US style" photos for no reason. Just sharing in case it might help you to do some retrospection.
Yeah, so for more than half the years I've applied I was living in the US on various non-immigrant visas. However, I finally ran out of options and moved to the UK where I was immediately eligible for permanent residence as an EU citizen (this was pre-Brexit). At this point, even if I win I'm not sure I would actually move, but I keep applying because it's free and takes 5 minutes, and it's become a bit of an annual tradition haha.

I have a sibling in California who is a US citizen and she could sponsor me, but for siblings the wait time is over 10 years and at that point, I'm really not sure what my life would be like and whether I would be able or willing to move.

It's not at all unlikely to play for 20 years and not win, with a probability of ~1%, you'd win once every 100 years on average haha. I'm shocked the program still exists to be honest. But if they don't cancel it and I win in 30 years or something I might retire in the US LOL.

I have in fact occasionally reused photos 2-3 times in a row over the years, but I'm almost certain that's had no impact on my chance of winning. It might have been an issue at the interview, but for the selection process, all applications that generate a confirmation number go into one pot and then a computer randomly selects the winners. Otherwise, the system would reject you immediately or tell you to use a new photo, and also there have been many reports of people winning who reused an old photo from a previous application, so I really don't think it matters for the lottery part.

That being said, these days you can use your phone to take a decent photo that meets the requirements, so there's really no excuse anymore to use an old photo, why take an unnecessary risk.

Sorry, long post.
 
Last edited:
DV-2024: Not selected. just checked.
I look at my citizens who cross the border into Mexico on CBP One. Why play it when you can get on a plane and cross the border. For money, documents, time is the same. To get an interview with Russia, I have to go to Warsaw. Warsaw does not issue Schengen to Russians. To get it, you need to go to a third country, for example, to Spain or Greece, then to Poland. Spending money on flights and don't need visas. When you can get on a plane to Mexico City or Cancun without a visa and cross the border for the same money. This lottery is made for Africa. In other regions, at the moment there are other more real opportunities to get into the United States. Also this circus with big cases.
 
Yeah, so for more than half the years I've applied I was living in the US on various non-immigrant visas. However, I finally ran out of options and moved to the UK where I was immediately eligible for permanent residence as an EU citizen (this was pre-Brexit). At this point, even if I win I'm not sure I would actually move, but I keep applying because it's free and takes 5 minutes, and it's become a bit of an annual tradition haha.

I have a sibling in California who is a US citizen and she could sponsor me, but for siblings the wait time is over 10 years and at that point, I'm really not sure what my life would be like and whether I would be able or willing to move.

It's not at all unlikely to play for 20 years and not win, with a probability of ~1%, you'd win once every 100 years on average haha. I'm shocked the program still exists to be honest. But if they don't cancel it and I win in 30 years or something I might retire in the US LOL.

I have in fact occasionally reused photos 2-3 times in a row over the years, but I'm almost certain that's had no impact on my chance of winning. It might have been an issue at the interview, but for the selection process, all applications that generate a confirmation number go into one pot and then a computer randomly selects the winners. Otherwise, the system would reject you immediately or tell you to use a new photo, and also there have been many reports of people winning who reused an old photo from a previous application, so I really don't think it matters for the lottery part.

That being said, these days you can use your phone to take a decent photo that meets the requirements, so there's really no excuse anymore to use an old photo, why take an unnecessary risk.

Sorry, long post.
This makes sense and happy you got an alternative!
 
DV-2024: Not selected. just checked.
I look at my citizens who cross the border into Mexico on CBP One. Why play it when you can get on a plane and cross the border. For money, documents, time is the same. To get an interview with Russia, I have to go to Warsaw. Warsaw does not issue Schengen to Russians. To get it, you need to go to a third country, for example, to Spain or Greece, then to Poland. Spending money on flights and don't need visas. When you can get on a plane to Mexico City or Cancun without a visa and cross the border for the same money. This lottery is made for Africa. In other regions, at the moment there are other more real opportunities to get into the United States. Also this circus with big cases.

I wish they'd stop giving all the visas to Oceania and Africa. Anyways, I have now given up and I will be trying Canada.
 
I wish they'd stop giving all the visas to Oceania and Africa. Anyways, I have now given up and I will be trying Canada.

They don't - Africa typically gets about the same quota as Europe (around 20K visas or so) and Oceania gets very few. However the chances of winning are much higher in Europe than in Africa due to the smaller number of entries. For the same reason, Oceania entries have the highest chance of all.
 
Hello Simon and all! I want to announce great news. In Russia and the former countries of the USSR, there is a case number in DV2024 65xxx and higher. KFC decided to fry more wings, than in 2014. This is genius!

Oh Sloner, good to hear from you, but I see wisdom is not coming to you with age.

The case numbers are higher for each region in DV2024 - that is true, but we do not know the selectee numbers, so it is too soon to assume they are "frying more wings". That might be the case, it might not.
 
Oh Sloner, good to hear from you, but I see wisdom is not coming to you with age.

The case numbers are higher for each region in DV2024 - that is true, but we do not know the selectee numbers, so it is too soon to assume they are "frying more wings". That might be the case, it might not.
Oh Simon, I was right. :cool:I can guess why they've been using old, terrible software since 2012.
There is no money in the budget for new things. Or rather, there is money, but the goal priority lottery is in the 1000th place where you need to invest money.
In the meantime, we will select 160 thousand applications each.


:cool:
 
Top