The registration period for DV2018 begins at noon on October 4, 2016, Eastern Daylight Time (“EDT”) and runs through noon, on November 7, 2016, EDT.  For DV2018, the Department of State will conduct the program entirely electronically.  Each entrant will make his or her submission on line. No paper applications will be accepted.

Each successful registrant will receive an entry confirmation number and can periodically check on line to learn if he or she has been selected.  To combat fraud, the Department will not use e-mail nor paper notice of DV selection.   Entrants make their submissions and check submission status at dvlottery.state.gov.  Only one entry for each person can be made in each year’s DV program.

Ineligible countries for DV2018 are: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (but not Northen Ireland), and Vietnam.  Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are eligible.

In 2005, Stockwell became the first female to lose a limb during active combat when her vehicle was struck by an IED outside of Baghdad. Her lower left leg was amputated, and although she underwent a number of surgeries and survived a number of infections, she writes on her website that her sense of gratitude and hope remained intact.

The journey that led her to become an international athletic champion and sports world icon is nothing short of inspiring. Just three years after her injury, she became the first Iraq veteran to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. After that, Stockwell changed over to triathlon, earning three national titles and three international titles.

Stockwell has been nominated for multiple ESPYs and has won a host of other awards. But according to a profile in Sports Illustrated, Stockwell is not the exception to the rule. Instead, the magazine suggested that Stockwell is at the forefront of a new generation of physically impaired veterans who have used advances in technology, along with their own resilience, to fight against the notion that they are disabled.

Along the way, Stockwell wrote, she has relied on the support of organizations such as the Wounded Warrior Project and the Achilles’ Freedom Team. Today, she is on the board of directors of the Wounded Warrior Project and the USA Triathlon Foundation.

Stockwell is pregnant with her first child, and she is expected to give birth in November. She told reporters for the U.S. Olympic Team that the timing of the baby was part of her plan for Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Although she was not sure until recently that she would be able to try out for the team, she told reporters that she had been training just in case.

Now, she says, she is ready to give it her all to achieve her dreams of Paralympic success.

Legal Help for Veterans, PLLC fights for veterans rights. We fight to make sure you get the benefits you deserve from the Department of Veterans Affairs. To learn more or contact an attorney about your Post Traumatic Stress, Traumatic Brain Injury, Mental Health, Sexual Assault, Hearing Loss and Tinnitus, Total Disability Based on Individual Unemployability, Medical Malpractice, or Aid and Attendance claim, visit http://www.legalhelpforveterans.com/ or call 800.693.4800

Since colonial times, immigration has played a major role in American diversity, and U.S. immigration policy has increasingly favored a more even distribution in the national sources of immigration. One legislative manifestation of that policy objective can be seen in the Immigration Act of 1990, which mandated the nation’s Diversity Visa Program.

The Diversity Visa Program is drawn from Section 131 of the Immigration Act of 1990 as an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act. Under the program, 55,000 Diversity Visas are set aside each year for persons from countries with low immigration rates to the United States.

Diversity Visas are distributed among six geographic regions. The greatest number of visas are reserved for nationals of countries with lower rates of immigration, but no single country may account for more than 7 percent of the available visas in a given year. In 1999, Congress reserved 5,000 of these visas to be made available for use under the Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act.

Each year, nationals from a predetermined list of countries that have been the source of at least 50,000 immigrants to the United States during the previous five years are excluded from entering the lottery for Diversity Visas.

The 2016 Diversity Visa Program opened its application process on October 1, 2014 and will close it on November 3, 2014. 

Natives of numerous countries are not eligible, their nations having exceeded the 50,000 immigrant threshold: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, the United Kingdom and its dependent territories, India, Vietnam, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines and South Korea.

After the annual application period has ended, a computer-generated random draw determines which persons have been selected for Diversity Visas. Beginning May 5, 2015, applicants can check online to find out if their entry was selected. The Department of State notifies successful applicants and provides instructions on how to apply for visas for themselves and eligible family members.

All Diversity Visa applicants must possess at least a high school diploma earned in their native country or the United States, or they must have worked at least two years in a job that required two years or more of training, experience or education. A high school Graduate Equivalency Diploma, or GED, does not meet the education requirement standard. Applicants also must not have been deemed “inadmissible” due to criminal activity or if they are “likely to become a public charge.”

An applicant who has been selected in the lottery process is not guaranteed a green card; the State Department always selects more Diversity Visa winners than the total number allotted for that year.

Winners of the lottery are provided a number showing their ranking in line based on their region of origin.

A. Banerjee is a Houston immigration attorney in Texas. Before selecting an lawyer, contact the Law Offices of Annie Banerjee by visiting their website at http://www.visatous.com.

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International students who intern at Texas A&M — mostly from India, Brazil and China — usually begin with a summer program, often at the university’s renowned Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering. Many of these students are drawn from top academic and research facilities in their home countries, including Kanpur University in India. Texas A&M clearly hopes that these summer interns will eventually become Aggies as graduate students.

“The goal is to showcase our research projects in the cutting edge technologies, with the hope that these students will gain very positive interactions with their faculty members, and would apply to our Ph.D. program in due course,” said Dr. Nazmul Karim, head of the chemical engineering department.

The university also sends out its American students to study overseas in new countries. This exchange of students through Texas A&M has made the university 13th among U.S. institutions of higher learning for sending students abroad to participate in credit-bearing academic programs. Indeed, more than 3,000 Aggies have studied at more than 90 locations around the world for a semester while sponsored by the university’s Study Abroad Programs Office.

American students studying abroad are enriched by an immersion in their host country’s traditions and culture, and they, in turn, share their outlook on and experiences in U.S. culture and its democratic process with their hosts. And Texas A&M University officials have a vision for what they expect of their American students when they return to Texas.“In order for Aggies to assume their place in the Texas economy, they will need to have a familiarity with how other societies function and markets in other countries work,” said Dr. Jane Flaherty, director of Texas A&M’s Study Abroad Programs Office. “Going abroad facilitates the development of this knowledge.”

A. Banerjee is a Houston immigration attorney in Texas. Before selecting an lawyer, contact the Law Offices of Annie Banerjee by visiting their website at http://www.visatous.com.

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