Trump Halts Green Card Lottery Programme — How Will Indians Be Affected? All You Need To Know

US President Donald Trump has ordered the suspension of the diversity visa programme, commonly known as the green card lottery, following deadly shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that left three people dead and several others injured.

The suspect in the attacks, Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, had entered the United States through the diversity visa route, triggering swift action from the administration.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she had directed US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to pause the programme to prevent what she described as further harm from a “disastrous” immigration pathway.

"This heinous individual should never have been allowed into our country," Noem said in a post on X, adding that the suspension was ordered at the president’s direction.

The diversity visa programme allocates up to 50,000 green cards annually through a lottery system to applicants from countries with historically low immigration to the United States, many of them in Africa and parts of Europe.

The aim is to diversify the immigrant population by excluding countries that have sent more than 50,000 immigrants over the previous five fiscal years.

As a result, India, China, Mexico and the Philippines are typically excluded from eligibility. India’s immigration numbers to the US have remained well above the threshold for years.

According to data from the US Department of Homeland Security, 93,450 Indians immigrated to the US in 2021, rising to 127,010 in 2022. In 2023, the figure stood at 78,070, still high enough to keep India ineligible for the lottery until at least 2028.

Nearly 2 crore people applied for the 2025 diversity visa lottery, with more than 1.31 lakh applicants selected, including family members. Selected applicants are required to undergo extensive background checks before being granted entry.

The suspension is unlikely to have a material impact on Indian applicants, as Indians have not had access to the diversity visa route for several years.

Instead, Indian nationals seeking permanent residency in the US rely on alternative pathways such as employment-based visas, family sponsorship, investment-linked migration or asylum claims.

However, these options are also facing increasing scrutiny. With the Trump administration tightening immigration rules across categories, uncertainty has grown for both Indian professionals and US employers who depend on skilled foreign labour.

While the diversity visa programme has long played a marginal role for Indians, its suspension underscores a broader hardening of US immigration policy—one that continues to narrow pathways for permanent migration.