Over a million Ghanaians entered the 2015 lottery program for a chance to win a visa to travel to the United States of America.
According to the Consul General at the US Embassy, Dr. Phillip-Franz Seitz, one in every 25 Ghanaians entered the diversity visa lottery last year for a chance to enter the United States.
However, only 2,000 Ghanaians eventually made it into the United States in the computerised random selection process.
[contextly_sidebar id=”nbZfdLykiEZ0s3nIw2vtQAue77N011o9″]The Consul General said on the Citi Breakfast Show on Wednesday, that for a person to be eligible to apply for the visa, the person would need to possess at least a high school certificate.
The US Embassy representative also revealed that no single country can receive over 7 percent of visas which are available to a single region.
He stated that the lottery, which has been held since 1990, held every year since it was created under the Immigration Act, allows 50, 000 people from other countries to acquire visas issued as part of the program every year, to migrate to the US in order to “add their vibrancy and make cultural contributions to the US.”
Nigeria, along with Brazil, Mexico, and Bangladesh are among the countries which will not be eligible for the lottery in 2014 as they have too many immigrants already in the US
The application for the lottery opens on Wednesday, October 1 at 4:00 GMT and closes on Wednesday, November 3.
The names of the winners would be available on their website and accessible to the public with a “special pin number” in May 15 and warned the public against emails, letters and telephone calls claiming they have won saying, “that is not us talking.”
By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana