In early May, about 22,000 people were notified they had won a chance to apply for a visa as part of the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which is aimed at increasing the number of immigrants from the developing world and countries with historically low rates of emigration to the United States.
The State Department said the results of a fresh drawing would be available Friday.
Deep disappointment
One of them, 42-year-old French native Armande Gil, who lives in Florida, called Thursday's decision by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson another disappointment.
"It makes the injustice even bigger and it's just a sense that there is nobody who hears us and whatever the government wants to do with us they can do and there is nothing we can do about it," said Gil, who had hoped to preserve her long-shot chance to get a U.S. visa without the traditional family or employer sponsorship.
From the nearly 15 million applications submitted between Oct. 5 and Nov. 3, 2010, about 90,000 names were supposed to be selected at random by a computer program. That number was to have been reduced to no more than 55,000 through attrition, interviews and various eligibility rules. READ FULL STORY
