US Restarts Green Card Lottery with Stricter Passport Rules; Indians Remain Ineligible

The US has resumed the Diversity Immigrant Visa (Green Card lottery) program with new rules requiring applicants to submit valid passport details and scanned copies to reduce fraud, effective April 10, 2026. However, Indians remain ineligible for this lottery and face long waits for employment-based green cards, with backlogs extending up to 134 years due to per-country caps. The changes aim to strengthen identity verification and curb duplicate or fraudulent entries in the program.