Green Card Update: Judge Freezes Reopening of Diversity Visa Lottery

Newsweek ^ | 10/39//26 | illal Rahman

[spintreebob]

A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked an order requiring the Trump administration to reopen the Diversity Visa lottery, allowing the government to keep the program paused while it pursues an appeal.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday granted the government's emergency request to stay a preliminary injunction. This would have required the State Department to open registration for the fiscal year 2027 Diversity Visa Program by Sunday, November 1.

Red Eagle Law is a California-based immigration law firm that represents Diversity Visa selectees. It sued to open registration for the Diversity Visa Program for fiscal year 2027.

The court's decision puts the lower court's order on hold while that appeal moves forward.

"Red Eagle will be moving forward quickly with other litigation to challenge the State Department's failure to carry out the DV program," Curtis Morrison, owner of Red Eagle, told Newsweek.

Newsweek has contacted the State Department for comment via contact form outside office hours and is awaiting a response.

"We do not endorse the Department’s failure to open the lottery registration period. Nevertheless, Red Eagle has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits because it is not within the zone of interests of the statute and does not have a cause of action," the court wrote.

The Diversity Visa Program makes available up to 55,000 visas annually to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. The appeals court said the State Department had failed, without explanation, to open the registration period for fiscal 2027, "effectively canceling" the program.

The Diversity Visa Program, commonly known as the green card lottery, grew out of congressional efforts in the 1980s to create immigration opportunities for people from countries underrepresented in the U.S. immigration system.

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TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: diversity; greencard; visa

[spintreebob]

This Diversity Visa is the stupidest part of immigration law, by far. I do not always agree with a law that favors a certain type of refugee, or a certain religion or occupation. I certainly understand and agree with laws that exclude murderers, rapists...DUI, Drunk n disorderly. But this diversity criteria is crazy and idiotic.

Incidentally, as a kid south of Seattle WA I was surrounded by Ukranians. I moved to Chicago and it was all Ukranians to my Northwest. They were good neighbors and Friends, more Republican than most. But how did Ukranians become eligible for a DIVERSITY lottery?

[Bon of Babble]

The "Diversity Lottery" is a program that never should have been implemented.

It is designed to dilute and lower the White population of the U.S.

"Diversity Lottery" winners include:

"Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a Portuguese national admitted via the Diversity Visa Lottery in 2017, was the suspect in a December 2025 mass shooting at Brown University and the murder of an MIT professor"

"Diversity Visa recipient Bekhzod Asrarov, an Uzbek truck driver admitted in 2024, allegedly killed Tobias “Toby” Forsythe, a University of Massachusetts Lowell soccer player, in a traffic collision in Ohio. Asrarov reportedly attempted to destroy evidence and could not speak English, prompting political debate over the safety of employing non-English-speaking immigrants in commercial driving roles."

All 100% preventable crimes.

[jroehl]

The problem is the big lie. If you get a visa to work in the USA the government does not track whether you actually eventually leave. It is a defacto grant of American citizenship. There are 100 ways to stay. So when they say there are only X amount of foreign workers in the USA. It is actually X times 10. But nobody is allowed to point this out. It is forbidden to talk about.

[Libloather]