Luck running out
Diversity visa lottery selectees' dreams on hold as deadline nears
Artemii and Roksana Medani with their two young daughters. Originally from Russia, Artemii has been applying to the U.S. Diversity Immigrant Visa Program since he was 18.
From left, Ramy Eid, his mother, Rabab Sultan, and his younger brother, Saif Eid, pose for a selfie. Ramy dreams of studying computer science in the United States.
Rabab Sultan and her husband sold their home and car and moved into a rental as their family prepared to leave Egypt.
IMMIGRATION
The U.S. Diversity Immigrant Visa Program randomly selects people from countries with relatively low rates of U.S. immigration for the chance to apply for one of up to 55,000 visas. Applicants whose cases remain unresolved when the fiscal year ends Sept. 30 lose their eligibility.
With days remaining, families are at the center of a legal fight. Their attorneys accuse the Trump administration of slow-walking thousands of cases to run out the clock.
"We are testing right now the limits of what our judicial system can take and what it can do," said Carolina Solano, an attorney with Red Eagle Law, which represents selectees in two lawsuits.
"The Trump Administration is protecting the American people by upholding the highest standards of screening and vetting of visa applicants," a State Department spokesperson wrote in an email.
'I feel American'
Artemii Medani entered the diversity visa lottery year after year since he was 18, hoping a government computer in Kentucky might choose his name.
"I was born in Russia, but I feel American," Artemii Medani, now 35, said. "… I've always thought it's my place, the place where I should live."
His certainty moved his wife, Roksana, 37, to enter the lottery, too. Six years after watching him lose, she checked the results online in May 2025 and learned her entry was selected.
In 2023, they left Moscow for Buenos Aires, Argentina, where their daughters learned Spanish. Now they imagined sunny South Florida, where a familiar language might soften another new beginning.
The Medanis attended their embassy interview in Buenos Aires on Oct. 28, then spent weeks securing a final record from Greece, where Roksana Medani had lived. On Dec. 18, the embassy confirmed it arrived.
But within days, the Trump administration halted diversity visa issuances after authorities identified the man responsible for deadly shootings at Brown University as a Portuguese immigrant who received permanent residence through the lottery in 2017. The State Department said it would review the program's screening and vetting procedures.
Narrow opening
The diversity lottery requires neither an American relative nor an employer sponsor. More than 20 million people vied for about 52,000 visas available through the 2026 lottery.
Being chosen each May wins an applicant only a place in line. The State Department draws far more names than it has visas, knowing some people will not qualify and others will run out of time. Selectees must gather records, pass background checks and medical examinations, pay hundreds of dollars in fees and make it through an interview before the fiscal year ends. Those approved abroad receive a visa to enter the country as permanent residents. Then a green card is issued.
Congress created the program in 1990. In fiscal 2024, the latest year with available data, diversity immigrants made up only 3.7% of the almost 1.4 million people who became lawful permanent residents.
Critics long argued that immigration should not begin with chance and the lottery invites fraud and threatens national security. A 2007 Government Accountability Office review found no documented evidence that diversity immigrants posed a threat, but warned the program was vulnerable to fraud.
Stuck in limbo
By the time Ramy Eid, 19, walked into the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Feb. 22, his family already spent months preparing to leave Egypt.
They sold their house and car and moved into a rental. Eid, his parents and two younger siblings pooled their savings and spent about $5,000 on documents, medical examinations and other expenses, including $1,650 in visa fees.
Eid earned about $3 a day repairing iPhones while studying. His mother, Rabab Sultan, worked 12-hour days as an accountant. In the U.S., he hoped to study computer science and make a life where Sultan no longer worked so hard for so little.
Sultan said the consular officer told them they qualified for visas but could not receive them. Their applications were instead placed in a temporary hold known as "administrative processing," embassy records show.
In March, the family joined 737 other selectee families in Ivanov v. Trump, one of several lawsuits challenging policies that stalled their cases. In June, 664 families brought another challenge, Medani v. Trump, in federal court in California.
The plaintiffs argued the government could not impose blanket policies that effectively suspended a program created by Congress.
Fits and starts
In August, two federal judges ruled in favor of the selectees. One of them, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, found the halt "arbitrary and capricious," and ordered the government to resume the program.
But even as the courts ordered the program processing to restart, the State Department canceled immigrant visa interviews worldwide for what it called a "global training initiative."
Davila questioned why the State Department waited so long to resume processing and ordered the government to report its progress three times a week. On Sept. 18, the department said it scheduled 86 interviews and 1,544 reinterviews, conducted 396 interviews and adjudicated 765 applications from Aug. 29 to Sept. 18.
But it did not say how many of those adjudications produced visas. Earlier status reports identified only 28 applications approved. Some applicants were placed in administrative processing again, while others were told their cases were sent to a "Visa Integrity Unit."
Many others still haven't received appointments.
"Why are they putting us through all of this?" said Sultan, 49. "We are only asking for our legal rights. We did everything by the book and never tried to migrate illegally. Is this really the justice that we always believed was one of America's greatest values?"
Stranded in war
In Iran, Setareh and her husband are living through war as they await visa applications.
Setareh, 32, an architect, requested partial anonymity because she fears retribution from the Iranian government. The couple hoped to establish a design and construction firm in the U.S. focused on sustainable, climate-resilient architecture.
The couple simplified their wedding so their marriage documents would be ready in time and folded their honeymoon into the trip to their embassy interview in Abu Dhabi. By then, the White House suspended almost all entry by Iranian nationals. Setareh and her husband carried professional portfolios to support a request for an exception available to people whose admission would serve U.S. national interest.
A refusal email arrived a day later with another applicant's name attached to their case number. The embassy corrected the name the following day.
After the court rulings, Setareh emailed the embassy, asking it to reconsider their applications. The online record showed their case was updated that day, but the embassy did not say if it reopened it.
Her medical examination since expired and the embassy that handled her application closed amid the war.
"We are only asking for our legal rights. We did everything by the book and never tried to migrate illegally. Is this really the justice that we always believed was one of America's greatest values?"
Rabab Sultan, an Egyptian national whose family applied for the U.S. Diversity Immigrant Visa Program but were placed on a temporary "administrative processing" hold, according to U.S. embassy records.
