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In the middle of the immigration polemic is the visa lottery for diversity following a class action lawsuit
started by 35 foreigners to have their lottery selection, that was placing them close to obtain the 50,000
green card available, recognized. We are 22,000 immigrants who received a selection for the green card lottery. After
13 days, during which we thought we were close to becoming US residents, they voided our selection.
The state department told 22,000 individuals that due to an error in the electronic system,
the results are no longer valid, and therefore, they will have to participate in another
draw on July 15th. Well, what happen is that there is a registration period of 30 days and what happened
is that the computer made a mistake and only drew selections among the people who had registered the
first day. So, the other people who applied during the other 29 days, were not taken into account in
the draw. A total of 15 million people from more than 20 countries in the world applied to the visa lottery
Among them is a man from Egypt who threatened to take his life if his selection is not acknowledged.
The lottery is a mechanism to bring people from other countries
that have low levels of immigration, so countries like Mexico and India cannot participate because
they already have many people coming to the US. The news,
was a terrible blow for people like Armande who believed that they had a chance to become US residents.
We are still hoping that there an out of court negotiation might be possible.
The lawyer of the plaintiffs is asking for a special mechanim to correct the mistake
like giving the residency to those who complied with the law and all its requirements.
These problems in the so-called visa lottery could have negative implications for this program
Especially taking into account that, for 6 years, a sector of
the country representatives have been wanting to put an end to this program.