Important News if You Entered the 2012 Diversity Visa Lottery!

By Victoria Neilson on 05/16/2011 @ 02:26 PM

Last week the Department of State announced that it made an error when it determined the winners of the 2012 Diversity Visa lottery. As a result, if you checked on line and saw that you won, unfortunately, you have not actually won yet.

DOS realized that there was some sort of computer glitch through which 90% of the winners were drawn from those who registered in the first two days. So DOS now plans to redo the whole lottery and make the new notifications available on or around July 15.

The bottom line is, everyone – winner or loser – who entered the lottery last year needs to check the DOS website again in July. Obviously, if you’d thought you’d won and now you’ve learned that you have not, this is truly terrible news. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that there will be any legal resource for false winners since winning the lottery is not a guarantee of getting a visa anyway.

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