October 18, 2011
Major DV-2013 Lottery entry form blunder or bug ?
This is the time of year where approximately 15-17 million hopeful applicants from all around the world are entering the US DV-21013 Diversity Visa Lottery that yearly grants 50,000 green cards to persons from “underrepresented countries,“ which have been less represented in employment and family-based preference categories in the United States of America and who meet two basic eligibility requirements. The Program makes green cards available to the winners, authorizing the winners and their families to live, study and work in the United States of America as permanent residents. The Green Card Lottery program is a United States congressionally-mandated lottery program for receiving a United States Permanent Resident Card, also known as a green card. The US Department of State has in effect the DV-2013 lottery from October 4, 2011 at noon US East coast time to November 5, 2011 at noon US East coast time.
Glaring Entry form Blunder
One would think that an electronic entry form that is to process 15-17 million applicants in a little more than 4 weeks would have been tested appropriately before being uploaded to the Department of States web site for applicant to submit their information through. We did some basic testing of the form and found, that if you register and you have 2 or more children, the form will not allow you to enter the middle name of child two and higher. You are only allowed to check the box “No Middle name”, thus, forcing applicants to submit incorrect information that unfortunately will come back to haunt them if they win. When these applicants win a green card and submit their formal application, there will obviously be a discrepancy between the formal application and the application that was selected in the lottery regarding any child labeled as child 2 or higher. Knowing how immigration authorities go by the book 100% of the time, this could lead to applicants being rejected for submitting incorrect information in their lottery application and in worst cases lead to their DV-2013 lottery application being denied. We felt that we had to publish this glaring programming bug, so that the applicants being forced to enter incorrect information on the Department of States homepage do not get held accountable for a web form programmers glaring mistake.
