208 days ago
208 days ago
But a federal judge dismissed the case on Thursday, backing the State Department’s claim that the lottery results were not truly randomized, as the process mandates.
“The Court cannot order the Department of State to honor a botched process that did not satisfy that regulatory and statutory requirements" of randomization, wrote US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in a 35-page ruling.
The department identified that 98 percent of the more than 22,000 selected had submitted their entries within the first two days of the application period in October 2010. The Department said this was the result of a computer glitch in a new randomizer program, which selected the winners in the order that they submitted their entries.
“There are 19 million more stories, from other lottery participants, many of which may be equally or even more compelling, and it is for that reason that Congress determined that every applicant would have an equal chance of winning the right to apply for the visa,” Judge Jackson wrote.
The attorneys for the plaintiffs, White and Associates based in Los Angeles, Calif., released a statement Friday criticizing the ruling:
“The end result is that the American government has lost credibility – promising 22,000 individuals the right to proceed with the immigration process and then snatching away that hope and promise. The State Department may have won in court, but it has lost the hearts and minds of 22,000 individuals from all around the world.”
Damn, that sucks...
