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The US green card lottery program requires a person applying to specify a country of birth. The official site doesn't state anything about people who were born in one of the former republics of the USSR. Does a person who was born in one of the former republics (The Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia just to name a few) counts towards the modern independent country that exists today, or toward Russia, as the successor of the USSR?

SIMEL
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    You should write the current name of the country/place of birth. See also https://fam.state.gov/fam/07fam/07fam1300apD.html (this document is not about the DV lottery, but the rules are the same). – R-traveler Oct 25 '17 at 15:29
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    That ain't the official site. The official instructions for the Diversity Visa 2019 are here and explicitly list which countries are eligible and ineligible. All the ones you listed (except Crimea) are listed as eligible. – mkennedy Oct 25 '17 at 17:43
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    @mkennedy I expect Crimea isn't listed because it is not a country. – phoog Oct 26 '17 at 15:09
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    There is an "interesting" special case for the native of the Crimea peninsula, but it's less important to me. –  Oct 25 '17 at 14:39
  • @phoog - USA does not list Crimea as separate country because listing it would result in agreeing with the annexation (which USA does not recognize) in a small way. When countries disagree about the borders, even more ridiculous stuff happens. Hypothetical question: what would happen if applicant from Crimea used "Russia" as birth country - would it render the application incorrect? – Peter M. - stands for Monica Nov 14 '17 at 18:28
  • @PeterMasiar I really haven't been following it that closely, but my assumption has been that Russia asserts that Crimea is part of Russia (that's what annexation generally means, after all). So even authorities that do recognize Crimea's annexation would not consider Crimea to be a country. That doesn't of course help someone born in Crimea to decide whether to put Ukraine or Russia. – phoog Nov 14 '17 at 18:46

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The instructions for the 2019 Diversity Immigrant Visa program (DV-2019) (pdf) are explicit about this:

  1. Country where you were born – Use the name of the country currently used for the place where you were born.

Note the phrase "currently used." This means, for example, that if you were born in Chisinau when it was part of the Soviet Union that you should enter "Moldova" as your country of birth.

phoog
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When applying for the US visa, they explain they want the country in which the place you were born in is currently located.

So, assuming they have the same convention. in this case you should specify the relevant CIS republic.

alamar
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    Can you link to where it appears, because I didn't see it on the DV program site? –  Oct 25 '17 at 14:46