U.S. Botches 2012 Visa Lottery

There’s no golden ticket after all: The Obama administration announced on Friday that this year's U.S. visa winners in the annual State Department lottery would not actually be receiving their visas thanks to a computer glitch. Nearly 15 million people from around the world entered the lottery this year in hopes of winning one of 50,000 U.S. immigrant visas, a sort of wild-card deal for those who might otherwise have difficulty obtaining visas. The software glitch produced results that "were not valid because they did not represent a fair, random selection of entrants as required by U.S. law," said the deputy assistant secretary of State who oversees the lottery. The programming error is being fixed and a new lottery will be held from the original pool of entries. Winners will be announced in July.