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WASHINGTON, July 23: Bangladesh, Nigeria, Poland and Ethiopia were the top finishers in the US visa lottery, which granted 50,000 permanent residence visas, or "green cards," allowing recipients to live and work in the United States, the US State Department said Thursday. The "diversity lottery," held each year under the US Immigration and Nationality Act, distributes the visas to residents of countries which have low immigration rates to the United States. Applicants were selected at random from a total of some 9.5 million applications submitted from November 1 to December 30, 2003, said the State Department. Bangladesh got 7,404 visas, Nigeria 6,725, Poland 6,211 and Ethiopia 6,060. Countries with heavy immigration to the United States, including Canada, China (minus Hong Kong and Taiwan), Colombia, Pakistan, The Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Britain (minus Northern Ireland) and Vietnam, were excluded from the lottery. — AFP
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