Popularity of US visa lottery on the wane

Just over half the successful Irish applicants to a lottery system for visas to work in America over the last five years have used them, according to new figures obtained from the US embassy.

The figures also show a drop off of more than 66 per cent in the numbers accepting their visas between 2000 and 2002.

Data obtained from the embassy on the Diversity Visa programme show that the Republic is allocated 205 visas a year on a lottery basis. However, in the five years between 2000 and 2004 only 575 'winners' accepted their visas.

In 2000, 191 of those offered visas accepted them but this dropped to 83 the following year and only 64 in endorsed their visas in 2002.

A spokesman for the embassy said that as the visa "year" starts on October 1 ^st"we cannot, therefore, say that the drop for 2001 is due to 9/11 as the year was almost finished by the time that happened."

The Diversity lottery offers 50,000 permanent resident visas each year to countries with low rates of immigration to the US. The application period runs for 60 days from November 1 ^steach year.

He spokesman said there was no way of gauging the number of applications from Ireland. "It could be 250, 10,000, or more. . . . .[but] it is highly doubtful that the number of people who register for the DV lottery would ever be under [205]. The overall number of applications was just under 6 million. Northern Ireland has 75 visa places.

The only data we have is on the number of people who "received visas - the difference is people who did not complete the process, changed their minds, or did not qualify".

If someone does not take up their visa for one of these reasons the visa is not offered to another candidate.

Last week the American ambassador to Ireland, Mr James C. Kenny, admitted he was disappointed at the fall in the number of students taking part in the J1 summer visa programme.

Applications received by the student travel agency, USIT for the programme dropped last year, 6,500 to 2,800.

While Mr Kenny said he was aware of some anti-US sentiment among students due to the war in Iraq, he pointed to other factors such as the strong domestic economy and the growing popularity of other destinations.