Plaintiffs Lose Fight Over Green-Card Lottery – WSJ.com
July 15th, 2011Plaintiffs Lose Fight Over Green-Card Lottery – WSJ.com.
The State Department will throw out the results of this spring’s green-card lottery and hold a new drawing, dashing the hopes of 22,000 entrants whom the government said it had erroneously chosen as winners in a May draw.
A federal judge Thursday denied a request by plaintiffs who hail from Asia, Africa and Europe to stop a new drawing from taking place and to recognize them as winners despite the computer error that led to their selection.
The results of the new drawing will be available Friday on the lottery’s website, a State Department spokeswoman said.
This year, a record 15 million people from around the world submitted entries to the free green-card lottery, which offers a quick path to legal permanent residency in the U.S. for 50,000 people selected by random draw.
In early May, 22,000 people checked the State Department’s lottery website and learned they had been chosen. But soon after, the government informed them that the electronic draw would have to be held again because a computer error caused 90% of the winners to be selected from the first two days of applications instead of from the entire 30-day registration period.
The government told affected individuals they would be re-entered in a fresh drawing because the lottery hadn’t been random, as required by law.
The 22,000 entrants orchestrated a publicity campaign and launched legal action to address their situation.
Their lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., included plaintiffs from more than 20 countries.
The court hearing earlier this week focused on the meaning of “random.” Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that they had been randomly chosen and that they didn’t know that by filling their applications in the first two days that they would gain any advantage. They also contended that the “outcome was indeed not uniform, but nevertheless still random as required by law.”
The State Department argued that the results didn’t represent a fair, random selection.
Under the program, visas are made available to applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S. Winners have the opportunity to move to the U.S. without a family member or employer as a sponsor, the usual routes to obtaining permanent residency.
Launched in 1990 to promote diversity in the immigrant population, the lottery is now open to people from almost anywhere in the world, except countries that already have a large number of nationals in the U.S., including Mexico, China, India and the Philippines. No special skills are required beyond a high-school diploma. Lottery winners eventually can apply for U.S. citizenship.
The number of entries has been on the rise.
This year’s total is more than 2.5 times greater than five years ago, when the lottery attracted 5.5 million entries. Immigration scholars attribute the increase to the spread of Internet connectivity and greater awareness of the lottery, which is free to enter.
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