How many diversity visas available?

[forum d]

I have read somewhere that for the DV 2021 the 5000 visas previously reserved for some Latin America countries will no longer be restricted for those countries, and that they will be split among all regions. Can somebody tell if this information is correct?

 

[SusieQQQ]

Yes, it’s been discussed with sources before here. (It was the Nacara relief act by the way, allocating DV visas to a separate program.)

 

[forum d]

Thanks for your reply. By the way, do you have the link of the forum where this matter was discussed?

 

[Aidyn]

there is a search feature on the forum, you could use that to bring up all mentions of it

 

[forum d]

Hi, I did try to get more information on this issue, but could not find much. Can someone tell the following: based on the text below, it seems that the only way for the US government to re-allocate the 5,000 visas previously allocated to NACARA would be through some sort of congressional approval since the NACARA specifically stipulated that those 5,000 visas shall be allocated accordingly. Was there any type of legislation approval this change in visa allocation?

"*The Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) passed by Congress in November 1997 stipulated that up to 5,000 of the 55,000 annually-allocated diversity visas be made available for use under the NACARA program. The reduction of the limit of available visas to 50,000 began with DV-2000."

 

[SusieQQQ]

Hi, I did try to get more information on this issue, but could not find much. Can someone tell the following: based on the text below, it seems that the only way for the US government to re-allocate the 5,000 visas previously allocated to NACARA would be through some sort of congressional approval since the NACARA specifically stipulated that those 5,000 visas shall be allocated accordingly. Was there any type of legislation approval this change in visa allocation?

"*The Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) passed by Congress in November 1997 stipulated that up to 5,000 of the 55,000 annually-allocated diversity visas be made available for use under the NACARA program. The reduction of the limit of available visas to 50,000 began with DV-2000."

The key phrase in the text of what you quoted above is *up to* 5000. There is nothing saying a fixed amount of 5k can’t be used for normal DV, and in fact there have been a number of years since 2000 that more than 50k DVs were issued. This is just the first year since then that we’ve seen official confirmation that they don’t need the maximum, which has been the case in practice for years now. That official confirmation was easily found through the search suggested above, which shows you the October visa bulletin said that “This [nacara] will result in reduction of the DV-2020 annual limit to approximately 54,650.”