Luck of Irish holds in immigration lottery

Press, 24 February 1987, Page 10

Luck of Irish holds in immigration lottery

NZPA-AP Washington

The United States has begun sending welcome news to 10,000 foreigners — out of 1.3 million applicants — who won a rare lottery offering American residency as the prize. The biggest batch of winners was Irish.

According to government figures released last week-end, Irish applicants won 3112 of the 10,000 immigration slots made available over the next two years to people who normally would not qualify, They did it by mailing their entry forms to the State Department at precisely the lucky moment The sweepstake was offered under a unique law designed to help people in 36 countries where emigration to the United States has decreased since 1965.

All 270,000 immigration slots available each year are usually filled by people with special pre-

ferences, desirable skills or close relatives already living in the United States.

To give all applicants an equal chance, the State Department advertised in the 36 countries that anyone sending entry forms to a special post-office box in Washington would be selected on a first-come, firstserved basis after the stroke of midnight on January 21. The estimated 400,000 requests received before then were thrown away, as were those sent mistakenly to United States embassies abroad. The first several thousand received on January 21 were ranked in order of receipt and computerised. The estimated 900,000 letters received after that arrived too late.

A State Department spokeswoman, Ruth van Heuven, said huge numbers of applicants sent multiple requests in hopes that at least one

would reach the department at precisely the magic moment and make it into the top 10,000.

“We estimate that one out of three applications was a duplicate,” she said.

Widespread interest in the programme was reported in Ireland, as well as in Canada, which finished second in the sweepstakes with 2078 winners. Britain was third with 1181, followed by Indonesia with 810, Poland with 592, Japan with 518 and Italy with 315.

Now that the winners have been picked, United States embassies around the world are mailing notifications and requests for biographical data.

Under the law, authorities have until September 30 to process the first 5000, and September 30, 1988 to process the next 5000. Applicants who fail to provide the necessary papers in time could be out of luck.