July 15, the State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs rolled out a new version of their electronic status check (ESC) website for those who registered for last year’s annual diversity visa (green card) lottery. 

The newly updated ESC website now features a Secure Login, Glossary, Search, and a modern Help System, complete with screenshots that (almost) puts their new system on par with commercial applications. Presumably too, the software error that incorrectly notified 22,316 people that they won in early May, has been patched and thoroughly tested.

We welcome these changes and congratulate the State Department for making their July 15 deadline.

According to the State Department website:

If you submitted a qualified entry from October 5, 2010 to November 3, 2010, your entry remains with us.  It will be included in the new selection lottery.  Your confirmation number to check results on this website is still valid.

Just like before, you need three pieces of identification to check your entry:

1. Confirmation Number, (for example: 20121O0DZWY3DOV9);
2. Last (Family) Name; and
3. Birth Year.

Winners will receive special instructions and forms directly on the U.S. State Department Entrant Status Check website. If you win, the ESC site will display a winning notice. NOTE: The text of the notice is blocked out to help prevent fraud. However don’t expect this to slow down the fraudsters from sending fake winning emails to as many email addresses as they can find. The latest victims of these ongoing email scams were customers of a well known green card lottery service.

In related news, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson threw out, as expected, Los Angeles attorney Kenneth White’s class action lawsuit. This case was filed only a month ago on behalf of a 28-year-old Dublin resident from Russia living in California on a temporary work visa and 35 other entrants from DV-2012 that were mistakenly notified they won.

Here in Albuquerque, a 22-year old senior University of New Mexico student from Scandinavia (I’ll call her “Olga”) lost her DV-2012 Confirmation Number. As I mentioned in my prior commentary, applicants like Olga are still out of luck for last year’s lottery. We hope the State Department comes up with a method in the future for applicant’s to retrieve their numbers if they are lost.