Computer glitch forces redo of US visa lottery (Associated Press, 13 May 2011)

Courtesy: “Associated Press (AP)”, 13 May 2011

Computer glitch forces redo of US visa lottery

By MATTHEW LEE

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A computer glitch corrupted the State Department's annual worldwide lottery for U.S. immigrant visas and the results will be scratched, the Obama administration said Friday, disappointing tens of thousands of would-be immigrants who were notified this year that they had won a chance to come and live legally in the United States.

Nearly 15 million people had entered the 2012 lottery hoping to win one of 50,000 U.S. immigrant visas available under a wild-card program that gives entrants who otherwise would have little hope of getting a coveted U.S. visa. Applicants for the random drawing do not have to have the usual family or employer sponsor. The lottery selects 90,000 winners, a total that is then winnowed down through attrition, interviews and strict educational and occupational criteria.

The software glitch caused what is supposed to be a random drawing to select 90 percent of winners from entries submitted on only the first two days of the 30-day registration period that ended Nov. 3, the department said on Friday. The results were invalidated because they did not represent what the department called a fair or random selection of entrants.

The problem stemmed from an in-house programming error that has now been fixed, the State Department told reporters.

A new lottery will be held from the existing pool of entries with winners announced in mid-July. Applicants do not need to re-enter to be eligible to win the do-over, it said.

The diversity visa lottery was established by Congress in 1994 to increase the number of immigrants coming to the United States from the developing world and countries with traditionally low rates of immigration to the U.S. It has been done entirely electronically for the past 15 years and the department said this year is the first time it has encountered a problem.

Between Oct. 5 and Nov. 3, 2011, 14.7 million entries were received. But the glitch caused the overwhelming majority of the winning entries to be chosen from those submitted on Oct. 5 and 6, the department said.

The now-invalidated results became available online on May 1 and about 1.9 million people checked to see if they had won before the problem was uncovered on May 5. Of those who looked up their status, about 22,000 were informed erroneously that they had been selected to move to the next step in the process, the department said.

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http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types-1322.html

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