Web site for green-card lottery swamped by registrations

A State Dept. spokeswoman said applicants should have filed sooner

By Linda Rosencrance

January 2, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - The U.S. State Department's online lottery site for green cards was swamped earlier this week when thousands of immigrants tried to file their applications at the last minute. The deadline to register for the first online-only lottery was midnight on Dec. 30.
"This really wasn't an issue," Kelly Shannon, a State Department spokeswoman, said today. "The only time we had our full server capacity utilized was Monday and Tuesday, during the last two days. In the last three days of registration, we had over 800,000 registrations received."
Despite the fact that many people wait until the last minute to register, it didn't make sense to add more servers during the last week leading up to the deadline, Shannon said.
"Last year, maybe people sent [their paper applications] in [at] an appropriate amount of time to their way of thinking, but the package didn't arrive in the U.S. in time to arrive at the State Department before midnight on the day the lottery closed," she said.
In addition, Shannon said, applicants had only one month to register in 2002. In 2003, they had two full months to do so. "If they waited until the last two days, it was their own decision to wait," Shannon said. "They had two months to get online to do this."
The 2003 lottery ran from Nov. 1 to midnight Dec. 30, she said. In past years, it ran from the beginning of October to the beginning of November.
"This year [2003], almost 6 million people submitted their applications online," she said. "We only have 50,000 green cards to give out."
Shannon said approximately 10 million people registered for the lottery in 2002. Of those, about 2.9 million applications were disqualified, while some 7.2 million were accepted.
She also said that the directions for this year's online-only application were easier to follow than were those for the paper-based application.
"If the fields were not fully filled out, you couldn't submit a registration online," she said. "With the paper system, if you didn't fill everything in, you were disqualified automatically."

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Additional Resources

POLL RESULTS

Leading IT Pros Weigh In on Top IT Issues

Accelerate your knowledge of the IT world you inhabit by viewing the results of a series of polls taken by your IT peers. These polls of 100+ IT professionals each are available for full viewing. They cover key topics such as virtualization, processor performance, green IT, cloud computing and many others. Be a part of the buzz.

WHITE PAPER

For Best Results, Think Beyond the Box

Technology is complex. Keeping it running productively shouldn't be. To that end, you want to minimize the number of solutions needed in-house to simplify operations, maintenance, and support. Kodak offers a best-practices model. One company provides support for both scanner and software, for fast problem resolution without vendor finger-pointing. Download now!

WHITE PAPER

Accelerating the Path to Demand Intelligence with a Demand Signal Repository

Utilizing demand intelligence improves the precision of pricing, product assortments, channel/store placement, and promotion, which are all essential for sustainable revenue management performance. Learn more, download this free whitepaper today.

White Papers & Webcasts

U.S. Restaurant Chain Bakes in Whitelisting
Targeted attacks, data theft and PCI DSS compliance are current challenges for most organizations today. In this Case Study, discover how Bit9 helped...

Modernizing the IT Infrastructure
(Source: Oracle) There is a lot of legacy in many government IT systems today - legacy hardware, legacy software platforms, and legacy skills...

IT Modernization in Government
As IT budgets are slashed, IT management pressures rise and legacy systems linger in government organizations, modernizing the IT infrastructure and applications has...

Usability Is Everything
Learn what sets Workday's HR and Payroll solutions apart from the competition....

Accelerate SSL Encrypted Applications
The amount of SSL traffic is growing in the enterprise. Because it is encrypted, it cannot be properly controlled and accelerated. Blue Coat...

The Value of Real SaaS at Workday
Cost savings, speed to value, and innovation brought to the enterprise by Workday's software-as-a-service solutions for HR and Payroll....

ESG Lab Field Audit
Many companies have successfully implemented Riverbed WAN optimization solutions within their Cisco networks. This ESG Lab Field Audit document explores the success that...

SaaS at Flextronics, Inc.
Dave Smoley, CIO of Flextronics, discusses the real value of software-as-a-service and why he chose Workday for his HR solution....

Shape Your Apps Strategy to Reflect New SaaS Licensing and Pricing Trends
Why are smart companies choosing software-as-a-service? Find out in the complimentary Forrester Research report...

Why Compliance Pays
This OnDemand webcast explores the relationship that firms with best compliance records have higher revenue, greater customer retention, lower financial losses from data...

All White Papers | All Webcasts