by Breaking good news today to share about the Green Card Lottery, the big beautiful bill passed, which the present administration was planning to introduce the application fee of 250 dollars for people who are planning to apply for the Diversity Visa Lottery.
The proposal had a part of visa fee for the DV winners and also the application for the Diversity Visa Lottery. The application, usually it is free of charge, the U.S government wanted to introduce it to be 250 dollars, which is practically impossible for someone to pay $250 and you are not so sure if even you are going to win.
Also, if you win, the visa fee which is 330 dollars will be increased to 400 dollars. So that was the plan. On July 1st, 2025, the Senate finally made their voting and they removed the proposed $250 DV Lottery application fee. Also, for the visa application fee increase from 330 to 400, it is not going to increase. It will continue to be 330.
So, at the moment, if you want to apply for the DV Lottery, it is a free of charge application, there will be no fee, if you want to apply for the Diversity Visa Lottery. So that is good news.
DV-2027 Lottery Program Application Date
The DV-2027, Diversity Visa Lottery program 2027 (Green Card Lottery 2027) application projected date is going to start on Wednesday, October 1st, 2025 and the deadline to apply, the last day to apply will be November 4th, 2025. These are the application dates.
Remember, there is no passport as a travel document requirement. So don’t say you don’t have the passport, no. There is a requirement for the photo to have to apply. When I say the photo, that means the photo of the main applicant and the photo of the derivatives or dependents, should all meet the requirement. The photo for yourself and the photo for your child or the photo of your spouse must meet the requirement.
So if your kids now are on holiday from school, make sure you take all their photos now. Don’t wait until they are at school, in the boarding school, or they are in just some other regions and you ask the teacher, please take a picture of my kids, no. Go and take pictures now and don’t use the photo you used in the last year’s application or previous entries, you will be disqualified.
As husband, when you apply make sure you put your wife and the children, and if you are the wife, apply too, put the husband and the children. This is a very good opportunity. You never know, you (husband or wife) might be the winner.
Remember, application will continue to be free of charge. You never know what your luck is. You might be the winner of the diversity visa lottery and get a permanent residency status of the United States of America. It doesn’t matter whether you want to permanently live in U.S or don’t want to live there. Apply, you’ll make the decision later. You might have a good job now, but what if you lose that job at next year? So just apply.
What if you’re a business person? Just apply, you’ll take this opportunity taking some business there and take it to a country. So it doesn’t mean necessarily you must live in America permanently, but just apply first, win and make the decision later. So that is the good news for those who are applying for the Green Card Lottery and to know that now it is continuing to be free application.
The Senate has passed it. They’ll take it back to the House of Representatives for the final voting. Then it will go back to the president to sign the big beautiful bill.
Other things in the Bill Beautiful Bill
Another part of the big beautiful bill, for those who do not know, is the asylum fees, they have introduced some fees. It used to be free of charge to apply for asylum. Now it will be a hundred dollars. That has been voted to continue. It will be that way, the new change.
Then if your application continues to stay for over one year, you will pay another hundred dollars. So if it’s three years, each year we’ll be paying a hundred dollars.
For work authorization, now you’ll be paying for the work authorization if you are under asylum. So the work authorization will be expiring after every six months and you’ll be paying $500 in that particular regard.
Those are some of the changes, but the bigger changes also apart from the immigration, is for those people following about the taxing and all those kinds of things. Let’s say you are an employee, you work overtime, the overtime will not be taxed. So there’ll be no tax on overtime. There’ll be no tax on tips for those people who are working in the service industries. They get some tips. You are not going to be taxed on tips.
There are other aspects. Any child born in 2024 forward, the government is going to open an index account, the account which doesn’t lose money. It will be at least minimum $1,000. They will put it there. The child at the age of 18, with the index and all these kinds of percentages, they are going to get the interest.
The child will get the money tax-free at the age of 18. And whether you are going to use it for college, you are going to use it for business, whatever you want to use, you can use. There is no restriction on how you’re going to use that money.
The parents will be allowed to contribute if they want to add some money there for that particular account for their children. They can be doing that. So it’s just like a small retirement for the children, but they’re not retiring. So that is something very, very good in other aspects.
There are some aspects on taxing on the social security, removed some of those ones. So there are so many other things under the big beautiful bill, which are good.
The immigration is no increase of visa fee. Remember the visa fee last year, 2024, under Joe Biden was increased in April, 2024, visa fee increased in almost all types of visas, visiting visa, student visa from 160 to 185, Green card by adjustment of status. If you apply green card, the fee increased. It used to be green card by marriage.
If you apply, you are not paying for the work authorization form but now you’ll pay 500. If you get married to a US citizen, you apply green card by marriage. Advanced parole form was free. Now you have to pay for that. So there are so many fees that were introduced last year, but they didn’t go to the house. They didn’t go to the Senate to get approval, no reason.
So we are waiting for the president to sign the Big Beautiful Bill and that becomes the law.
