I used that site before and will use it for the next opening
Thanks Roger
I used that site before and will use it for the next opening
Thanks Roger
Nothing wrong with being English (or from the UK), but the Diversity Visa lottery is aimed at getting people in that are under-represented. As so many UK people already go to the US via other means, there are too many of us to qualify. If the number of UK people getting residency in the USA were to drop then we would become eligible for the lottery again.
It's a bit of a quirk in the system that allows people from Northern Ireland to enter (there are reasons that I can't recall, but I think due to their association with Ireland)
Any country that has more than 55,000 over a 5 year period emigrate to the States by other means is ineligible, so some countries with a small population will almost always be eligible.
As far as Ireland go I think when the schemes were being set up there were so many people in power in the US who had Irish ancestry they made sure they were included (that'#s my theory anyway.
I thought the reason why English cannot apply is because there are so many people in the US who consider their roots to be England that its the predominant background. I think there is a ridiculous statistic that something like 25% of the population of the US (or someting like that) can trace their roots back to Captain Smith and the original settlers in Virginia.
On a visit to New York a few years ago we were on Ellis Island. There is a map of the US and you can put in a code for various ethnic backgounds and it gives a figure of how many US citizens consider that to be thier background based on the last Census. The figures for Irish and Italian were not surprisingly very high but were dwarfed by the figure for English.
I think the thing with Nortern Ireland is that the Republic of Ireland had not given up its claim to the North (don't know if they have now) and so Politicians in the US considered people of Northern Irish background to be Irish and therefore eligible to participate in the lottery but I may be wrong on that one.
No, claim to Northern Ireland has not, and will never, be given up!!
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