20,000 US lottery hopes dashed
Source: Agencies |
May 15, 2011, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
FOR a few joyful days, more than 20,000 people around the world thought they had won a lottery that gave them a chance to come and live legally in the United States. On Friday, the US State Department sent its regrets.
Computer problems had negated the lottery's results, it said. The exercise will have to be repeated, and those announced as winners would have to wait it out with the previous losers.
The decision reopens competition for 50,000 wild-card visas for people who otherwise would have little hope of qualifying. About 15 million had applied, so the bad news for 20,000 was very good news for many others who had thought they had lost.
The State Department apologized.
"Any results previously posted and available through the website are considered invalid," the department said in a statement. "We sincerely regret any inconvenience or disappointment this problem might have caused."
The drawing, which the State Department calls the Diversity Visa Lottery, is an annual free-for-all established by Congress in 1994 to increase the number of immigrants from the developing world and from countries with traditionally low rates of emigration to the United States. Applicants do not have to have the usual family or employer sponsor.
(AP)
Computer problems had negated the lottery's results, it said. The exercise will have to be repeated, and those announced as winners would have to wait it out with the previous losers.
The decision reopens competition for 50,000 wild-card visas for people who otherwise would have little hope of qualifying. About 15 million had applied, so the bad news for 20,000 was very good news for many others who had thought they had lost.
The State Department apologized.
"Any results previously posted and available through the website are considered invalid," the department said in a statement. "We sincerely regret any inconvenience or disappointment this problem might have caused."
The drawing, which the State Department calls the Diversity Visa Lottery, is an annual free-for-all established by Congress in 1994 to increase the number of immigrants from the developing world and from countries with traditionally low rates of emigration to the United States. Applicants do not have to have the usual family or employer sponsor.
(AP)
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