About United States Diversity Visa program The Diversity Immigrant Visa program, also known as the green card lottery, is a US government lottery program for receiving a US Permanent Resident Card. The program aims to diversify the immigrant population in the US by providing 50000 visas/green cards annually to applicants from countries with low numbers of immigrants in the previous five years. In order to participate in the lottery, applicants from eligible countries have to fill in the form at the web site: https://www.dvlottery.state.gov/. Approximately 100000 entries are randomly selected initially, and after additional selection steps, 50000 visas are issued. Content of the dataset The dataset contains the number of online entries and the number of visas issued, grouped by each country. The data from 2007 to 2018 fiscal year are included for online entries and from 2008 to 2017 fiscal year for issued visas. Source The data was obtained from the US Department of State website: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/diversity-visa-program-entry/diversity-visa-program-statistics.html