Popularity of US visa lottery on the wane ("green card")

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2005/0121/breaking69.htm

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.
...

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 1st each year.

Only recently, the Dept of State, which runs the "lottery", has been requiring that all the information, including the photograph, be done online. The photograph must be digital or scanned into the computer. Now, this prevents people from disadvantaged regions or from poor backgrounds to even try their luck at the lottery.

And yes, fewer and fewer people want to come to the U.S. Many more prefer Canada or EU countries.

for years. It's not easy, you need an attorney to help you with the application and it's expensive. You have to pay to play. Maybe that's why it's dropped off. We gave up a few years ago.