Created in 1995, the lottery system leads to the awarding of 50,000 permanent residency permits each year to people from countries that send relatively few emigrants to the United States.

But it has long been in the crosshairs of US Republican lawmakers, who control the House of Representatives and have included a plan to scrap it in the comprehensive immigration reforms currently being debated in Congress.

A final vote on the reforms is not expected before this summer, but if they pass, the so-called diversity visas would vanish from next year.

This year´s crop of hopefuls did now know when they applied that this might be their last chance, as would-be immigrants had to file a free online application in October 2012.

From 1600 GMT on Wednesday, the candidates were finally able to check their status on the government website www.dvlottery.state.gov, using their personal confirmation number.

For Yuri Jacquet, 28, this is his sixth failed attempt to win a visa. “It´s a little discouraging,” admitted the entrepreneur, who has built a website selling clothes and works between Martinique and the US state of Florida.

“Each time, you tell yourself the next time will be the one.”

Some 100,000 names were selected in a first round, because not everyone will complete the process for a visa, and a maximum of 50,000 Green Cards will ultimately be given out.

In last year´s lottery, 7.9 million people, with 4.6 million spouses and children, submitted applications.

More than 18,000 Africans got Green Cards through the lottery the year before, the most from any continent. Half of the lottery is reserved for applicants from Africa, who could now lose out.

Mamina Ezra, a 28-year-old Ethiopian, was one of the lucky ones this year — her 11th try.

“I´m still in shock,” she told AFP. “I was so used to losing that this has really shocked me.”

Ezra, who earned an advanced business degree in New York, was going to have to return to Ethiopia this summer if she couldn´t find an employer willing to sponsor her for a visa.

French engineering student Nathaniel Assayag, 23, at New York´s Columbia University, wasn´t as lucky, but he is one of the people who may fare better under the proposed reforms.

“Participating in the lottery was, for me, a way to take the fast lane” to immigration, he said.

“Getting an H-1B work visa (a temporary visa) is very difficult because, even if your company is ready to sponsor you, the quotas are much lower than the demand,” he said.

The proposed reforms massively increase the number of Green Cards and visas allocated to highly qualified workers — and, in particular, students like Assayag, getting degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math.

The winners of this year´s lottery will be given interviews from October, where they will have to show proof of a high school diploma or at least two years of work experience, as required under the program.

Countries that sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the past five years are excluded from the lottery.

This year that includes a range of countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, mainland China, Mexico, Pakistan, South Korea, and Britain, except Northern Ireland.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bill to create a permanent visa program for foreigners with advanced science and technical degrees cleared the House of Representatives on Friday, the latest salvo in the broader fight over U.S. immigration reform.

The Republican-backed measure proposes reserving 55,000 permanent residence visas for foreign graduates of U.S. universities with master’s and doctoral degrees in the “STEM” disciplines of science, technology, engineering and math.

Some Democrats argue that the plan unfairly pits lower-skilled immigrants against those with more education in the battle for visas as the new law would eliminate an existing program, often called the green card lottery, that provides visas to 55,000 people from countries with lower rates of immigration.

Many Democrats, including President Barack Obama, oppose the Republican bill as it moves ahead a narrow measure instead of focusing attention on a comprehensive immigration reform.

The bill on Friday passed 245-139 in the Republican-controlled House, largely along party lines. But the legislation has little chance passing in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Democrats, emboldened by strong support from Hispanics and other minorities in the November 6 election, are pushing for a large immigration overhaul that would put 11.5 million immigrants who are now in the country illegally on a path to citizenship – a major point of contention between the two parties.

Broadly, both parties agree on the benefits of helping science and technology experts stay in the United States. U.S. law already gives foreign students in STEM fields extra time to legally stay in the country after graduation to find work.

Texas Republican Representative Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who had introduced the “STEM Jobs Act,” said the high-tech visa program would help retain U.S.-trained workers to spur innovation and job creation.

“In a global economy, we cannot afford to educate these foreign graduates in the U.S. and then send them back home to work for our competitors,” Smith said.

STEM jobs, including teaching positions, account for roughly 6 percent of the U.S. economy, according to Nicole Smith, a senior economist who studies the issue at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

“We know some of the best schools in the world in those areas are found in the United States… This is a chance for them to cut out the red tape” and help graduates stay, she said.

The number of STEM jobs is expected to grow by 17 percent by 2018, outpacing broader job growth, Smith’s research found.

But not quite a quarter of them will require a graduate degree, which Smith said raised a question for narrowly targeting highly-educated workers: Will there be sufficient demand for their skills?

“There is this pre-occupation with people with master’s and PhD’s in STEM,” she said, adding that much high-tech work relies for example on lower-educated technicians.

In debates on the House floor on Friday, Democrats argued that focusing on advanced degrees gave preferential treatment to better-educated workers at the expense of the lower-skilled workers who make up a large portion of U.S. immigrants.

“Talk about picking winners and losers,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who chairs the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

“There was no special line for PhD’s and master’s degree holders at Ellis Island. There was no asterisk on the Statue of Liberty that said your IQ must be this high to enter.”

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Xavier Briand and Leslie Gevirtz)