The latest U.S. diversity-visa lottery drew only 8 million entrants, about half as many as last year, when a record 15 million people participated

The three countries with the most entries this year were Nigeria, with about 1.4 million, Ghana, 909,000, and Ukraine with 853,000.

Bangladesh, which accounted for 7.6 million entries last year, were excluded because of the large numbers of them already living in the country. State Department officials attribute the decline in applications to the government's exclusion of Bangladeshis.

The purpose of the lottery is to make the U.S. population more diverse and make green cards available to parts of the world that typically don't send immigrants here.

The United States makes about 50,000 green cards available to the program each year.