The U.S. has excluded Cuba from the 2026 Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (“Visa Lottery”) for fiscal 2026. [1]
This was done, said the U.S., because more than 50,000 Cubans have emigrated to the U.S. in the past five years. The other countries similarly excluded are Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Venezuela and Vietnam.
Under another U.S. program (humanitarian parole), “as of last July, some 106,757 Cubans had benefited from this process and some 104,130 had already traveled to the US.
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[1] Cubans are left out of the lottery for immigrant visas to the US, Diario de Cuba (Sept. 28, 2024).
