I was born in Canada. I would like to know whether Canadian-born citizens will ever be able to apply for the green card lottery.

The Immigration Act of 1990 ("IMMACT 90"), Pub. L. No. 101-649, S 132(e), 104 Stat. 4978 (1990) created the DV-1 immigrant visa lottery. Beginning on October 1, 1994 and continuing thereafter, 55,000 immigrant visas annually were made available to diversity immigrants and to their designated family members. Persons born in countries having the lowest levels of immigration to the United States within the preceding five year period were eligible. Certain countries with the highest levels were specifically excluded; Canada was one of them. Unless the level of immigration from Canada to the United States drops substantially (an unlikely scenario), Canadian born citizens will not be eligible for the DV-1 lottery in the future.

For your own information, Canadians were at some point eligible for another type of green card lottery. IMMACT 90 also provided for a three-year ''transitional'' diversity visa program prior to the commencement of the DV-1 program. Technical corrections legislation enacted by Congress in 1992 made Canadians eligible for the AA-1 program. The AA-1 lottery applied to natives of countries that were ''adversely affected'' by certain 1965 amendments to the INA. However, the AA-1 lottery only ran from October 1, 1991 to September 30, 1994.