The annual Diversity Visa program makes permanent residence visas for the United States of America available to persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. Applicants for diversity visas are chosen by a computer-generated random lottery drawing. The visas, however, are distributed among six geographic regions with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and with no visas going to citizens of countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the past five years. To hear more about this program, listen to VOA's report on Diversity Visa Lottery 2004.