Principal applicants will have to include information such as the passport number, the issuing country, as well as expiration date. According to a release published by the State Department in the Federal Register on Wednesday, this measure aims at reducing the increasing number of fraudulent entries received in recent years. Secondly, principal entrants to the upcoming Program (DV 2021) and subsequent ones must be in possession of a valid passport in order to enter the Lottery. Though criticisms from many quarters refer to this measure as an intrusion into selectees privacy and a violation of their rights, officials have downplayed the severity, referring to the procedure as just an extra question added to the existing list of inquiries about entrants/selectees personal information. On the contrary! Henceforth (from the end of last month – May 2019), all selectees filling in the DS-260 must respond to this new question. But this time around, it’s not just directed at a number of selectees neither is it requested only at the time of interview. Some selectees were only asked – during their interview – to present Form DS5535 (a separate form which requested social media information) – a surprise to a number of applicants. That question requires selectees to list ALL the social media accounts they have used in the past five years.īefore now, this question was not included in the form. Firstly, a new question has been added to the DS-260 form. Today – just a few months down the road – that prediction seems to have become reality in the form of two major additions to Diversity Visa program regulations.
In that article, I mentioned that we would continue to see one new regulation or the other (every now and then) as long as the DV program exists. The new procedure involved selectees scanning and sending a number of documents to KCC, a procedure which didn’t exist prior to DV 2019 selection. Primary Entrants must have valid passportsĪ couple of months ago, I wrote an article on a new DV regulation that had come into force.