Eligibility - based on place of birth or citizenship?

[pm5k 129]

The instructions for the diversity visa program state that "natives" of certain countries are eligible.  Does this refer to one's place of birth, or their citizenship?

 

   

[TNJ17 1,329]

Doesn’t one’s place of birth give them citizenship to that country? 🤨

[geowrian 22,337]

For the DV lottery, it goes by your country of chargeability, which is almost always the country of birth...not country of citizenship. I'm not too familiar with all the exceptions to the rule here, sorry, but I will add this reference:

http://britsimonsays.com/country-of-chargeability-for-dv-lottery/

 

43 minutes ago, TNJ17 said:

Doesn’t one’s place of birth give them citizenship to that country? 🤨

Sometimes. It depends on the country if they use jus soli (right of soil) or jus sanguinis (right of blood) to pass citizenship to a child.

[SusieQQQ 11,586]

The instructions are also very clear about the fact that it is almost always based on country of birth. 

The exceptions that you can use if your country of birth is ineligible, are if your spouse comes from an eligible country (but then the spouse also has to meet all the education etc requirements), or if you can prove your parents, who are from a n eligible country, were only temporarily in your birth country when you were born - often impossible to prove so many years later.

 

TNJ717, many people have citizenship of countries other than where they were born, and many countries do not automatically confer citizenship on people just because they were born there. But for DV purposes, citizenship doesn’t matter at all.