 What's up guys? Welcome back to the channel. In this video today, I'm going to show you step by step how you can apply for the Diversity Visa Lottery Program or what's also known for the American Green Card Lottery Program. This is a program that will allow you to move to the United States as a resident if you get lucky and if you win this lottery. For the year 2023, applications are open in 2021 from now up until November 9th of 2021. So if it's something that you are interested in, you still have a couple of days to apply. There are a couple of eligibility rules that will determine whether you are eligible to apply for this program. Usually it has to do with your age, the country that you come from, and then your level of education. But it's not something that I'm going to talk about today. If you have any questions about eligibility requirements, let me know in the comments and I can address them in a future video. But for the sake of this video today, we're going to focus on the application process. The application process is free. You can do it all by yourself and I'm going to show you how you can do that step by step. In order for you to start your application process, you want to go to dvprogram.state.gov. There will be a lot of websites online that will try to trick you into using their services for the application process. You don't have to go through a third party to do the application. You can do the whole thing on your own. And this dvprogram.state.gov is the official USA Department of State website. And this is the only place where you can apply for this program. So in this first page right here, they do have some details about the program in general. So like I said earlier for 2023, the application is being open from October 6 of 2021 up until November 9, 2021. So you want to apply before November 9, 2021. And usually, when it comes to the last two days, the system gets a little bit sluggish. So I would say you definitely want to avoid the last day or the last two days. And there are some instructions about the entry. You can read through those. There are some instructions about photo. And I'm going to come back to photo instructions later on. But to start the application process, you want to go under entry form and you want to click begin entry. So once you click that, it's going to take you to this page where you will need to enter an authentication code just for security purposes. So I'm going to go in and enter that. Okay. So once you do that, you click submit. And that is going to take you to part one of the application process. So this is very straightforward. The first page is very straightforward. You will have to enter your last name, your first name, and then your middle name. If you don't have a middle name, you want to check the box and say no middle name. And then same thing for first name, you have to specify your gender, your birth date, month, day, and year. Then the first question will be around the city where you were born. You want to enter the birth city only, do not enter the district, the country, province or state. So just the name of the city where you were born. If you don't have that information, you can check birth city and known. The fifth field that's required is the country where you were born. And then the next one is the country of eligibility for the DV program. So this will be your country of eligibility. It will be the same as your country of birth. Your country of eligibility is not related to where you live. So for example, let's say for someone who is Moroccan, right? And you live in the United States. You are in the United States as let's say a student or you are working right here. You are not a resident and you are not a citizen and you are still interested in applying for this program. So your country of birth would be Morocco and the country of eligibility also will be Morocco, even though you are currently living in the United States. So and that would answer the question. Are you claiming eligibility based on the country where you were born? Yes. And this goes back to what I was mentioning earlier about your country of birth. There will be a list that you can refer to to make sure that your country of birth is eligible to apply for the diversity visa program because there are a lot of countries where you can't really apply for this program. So usually the country that you are claiming eligibility for the DV program from will be the same as where you were born. The next one would be the passport information. You want to enter last name, first name, middle name as mentioned in your passport. You will need to enter your passport number, the expiration date, including month, day and year and all of these fields are required. And then the country of issuance of your passport, which is usually the country that you are seasoned off. And then the last question here is the passport exemption. I am not required to submit passport information because of one of these three reasons. So if any of these three reason is applicable, you want to make sure that you check one of the boxes right here and specify why you cannot submit your passport information. All right. And then the next step will be entering your photograph. This is the most important step I would say because you want to make sure that your photo that you are going to use to apply for the program is aligned with what their acceptance criteria are. So I'm going to go back right here to the main page and let's take a look at the photo instructions. So I highly recommend, unless you are a professional photographer, to go and get this photo taken professionally. So this page right here has a lot of photo instructions that you can refer to. One of the requirements, for example, is the fact that you cannot wear eyeglasses to take a photo for this application. And I have to tell you, they are very particular about the photo that you are using because if it's not aligned with their requirements of photo, your case is going to be immediately rejected and they're not even going to proceed with your application. So they do have some examples right here of acceptable visa photos. This is what it looks like. And then at the bottom right here, they even give you some examples of photos that are not going to be acceptable like this one right here. It's not very well lit. This one's got some blue haze in the color that's not acceptable. And then the last one, it's got some shadow in the background. So when it comes to shadows and lighting, like you see right here, they will give you all of the details that you need to know about the size, the position, the resolution, the glasses, the attire and even the background. So if we go right here to background, for example, it would tell you that the background is uniform, plain and white or off white and free of shadow. So I would recommend when you want to get your picture taken, you go to a professional studio and or a professional photographer and you want to make sure that they understand what these requirements are. So these are some good examples that will help you. Now the digital image requirements, if we go right here to digital image requirements, it's going to give you all of the details about the dimensions, which is very important, color, file format and then the file size. And then they also have this tool called the photo tool right here where you can take the digital photo that you have after you take your photo and then you can use this tool if you want to do any changes or modifications to the picture as far as changing the size, the position, cropping or anything like that. Usually if you don't have an image editor on your computer, you would use this tool, which is pretty important. But like I said, just print or take a screenshot of these detailed requirements and take it to the professional photographer or studio and they usually know if you tell them that, hey, I want to get my photo taken for diversity visa lottery program, they will know what the requirements are. But if they don't know for one reason or the other, you want to make sure that you have all of these instructions handy. Now they will send you or email you a copy of or digital copy of your photo. And then we're going to go back to our application right here under internet photograph and all you'll have to do is to click choose new photo. And then you are going to attach the photo that you are going to be using. So that will take care of the photo for the application. Next, you are required to enter your mailing address, the address where you are currently living in care of that would be your name or the name of the parents or whoever lives there. And then you get your address, city, zip code and all of that. And then the country as well. So number 10, you are going to be asked about the country where you live today. And that's what I mentioned earlier. You are Moroccan, you live in the U.S. or you live in France, you would want to mention the country where you are living. And then number 11 will be phone number. This phone number is optional. I need you to know that no one is going to call you even if you win the diversity visa lottery program. No one's going to call you and you're not going to receive an email either. And I'm going to explain to you how you can check the status of your application. Next will be your email address. It's a required field. You get your email address confirmed as well. You will be asked about the highest level of education you have achieved. So you want to make sure that you add it there. Don't lie about anything that's going on in your life. If you definitely don't want to do that. I don't see a reason why you would want to do that. But just answer these questions to the best of your knowledge. And number 14, you will be specifying your current marital status. Are you married? Are you not married? Just answer truthfully. And then 15 will be the number of children that you have. That would include all of your biological children and then legally adopted children. You can read through the instructions and basically they care for the number of their children because when you win the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, there will be a process to make sure that your spouse and your kids are also part of this. And don't worry, whether you are married or not married, have kids or don't have kids, it's not going to impact your application process. And it's not going to increase your chances of winning the Diversity Visa Lottery. So from there, you just hit continue. And that's going to take you to the next step. I cannot show you what the next step exactly looks like because I'm not applying for myself, obviously. And I'm not applying for anyone that I know at this point of time. But you should receive a success message. This is what it looks like. This is just a picture that I got from the internet, but I remember what that message looks like. It should say that you successfully submitted your application. Like I said, sometimes towards the end of that period where you can apply, the system gets very sluggish. So you make sure that you do have a good internet connection. And also try to apply as soon as you can. And if you keep receiving a failure message, you have to try again and again. But the last message that you will receive, it will be a success message. It will have your information and it will also have a confirmation number. And that confirmation number is very important. So you want to make sure that you either take a screenshot and you save it to your computer or your phone. Or you want to print that page or have that number written somewhere. Because that is the number that you are going to use later on in order to check the status of your application. Like I said, they're not going to call you and then they're not going to send you an email, whether you win the lottery or you don't want to win the lottery. The only way for you to check your status is by going to the same website that I mentioned, dvprogram.state.gov. And then you scroll all the way down to where it says dvinterest status check. You're going to click check status when it's the right time, obviously. And then you hit continue. And it's going to ask you about the confirmation number. This is the confirmation number that you have right now. So make sure that you are saving it. And then once it's the right time to check on the status of your results, you go in there and then you type the confirmation number that was given when you applied. And then you will need your last name, year of birth, and then authentication. You enter this information, click submit, and it's going to tell you whether you won the lottery or you didn't. This is what the successful message or winning the lottery looks like. This is what the message will look like. And then if you don't win the lottery, this is what the message looks like. So the process pretty straightforward. And then again, this is a lottery program. So don't apply for this with high hopes that you are going to win. It is purely a question of chance. So just apply if it's something that you are interested in, if you're interested in becoming a U.S. resident. It might stick, it may not, but it's worth trying. I hope that you guys found this video to be useful. And please, if you did, give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. My name is Habiba. This is Trekking Pal. And if you have any questions about the application process, let me know in a comment and I will be so happy to help you out. Thank you so much and we'll talk to you later.