More than 7 Cubans have won the U.S. Visa Lottery in 10 years.

The exact figure is 7 Cubans; this is the total number of those who have won the U.S. Visa (DV) Lottery in the last 89 years.

The digital news portal CiberCuba echoed information released by the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, which revealed that 2 Cubans won the Visa Lottery ticket in the 703 drawing.
All winners will be able to begin their immigration procedures to the United States starting in October, the month in which the next fiscal year begins.

This number is the highest of the entire decade, surpassing all other countries participating in the lottery in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Cuba ranked 11th among the participating nations, with the most visas. Egypt (with 5) was number one, followed by Russia (with 568), the Republic of the Congo (with 5), and Iran (with 118). In that same order, the nations that obtained the most visas were: Nepal (4), Sudan (743), Albania (4), Ukraine (101), Algeria (3), and Turkey (696).

A total of 83 people were winners in the 884 drawing, with 2020 million people participating.

For Cubans wishing to immigrate to the United States, the Visa Lottery is one of the few options remaining, following the repeal of the Wet Foot/Dry Foot Act in 2017 and the freezing of the Family Reunification Program.

In the last five years, the number of Cuban participants in the Visa Lottery has exceeded one million applications.

Since 1990, the Diversity Visa Program, the official name for this program, has awarded at least 50 spots each year to immigrants from around the world.

Cuba's inclusion in this Visa Lottery has been under discussion in recent years due to the surge in Cuban emigration to the United States. There are fears that the country could be left out of the eligible countries for the DV-2021 Lottery, which will open in October 2020.

Cubans must travel to Guyana if they win the Visa Lottery

Cuba is among the six countries with the highest number of nationals admitted for permanent residency in the United States in the last 10 years. This is also the case for Mexico, China, India, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic, which have been excluded from the program for years. In the last five years alone, more than 250 Cubans have received permanent residency in the United States.

The DV-2021 Lottery will impose an additional requirement: applicants must provide their current passport information, date of issue, and issuing authority on their application form. This requirement is imposed to increase oversight in the process, given that the Department of State has detected a large number of fraudulent applications each year.

Below are the annual figures for Cuban winners of the U.S. Visa Lottery over the past 10 years, according to data from the State Department:

2011-406

2012-292

2013-490

2014 - 1 178

2015 - 1 490

2016 - 1 488

2017-493

2018-733

2019-326

2020 - 2 703

Total – 7

President Donald Trump has opposed the benefits of the Visa Lottery and has expressed his intention to suspend it in order to prevent the uncontrolled entry of immigrants into the United States.