Lottery

When I lived in Naples, FL my neighbor was a young engineer who came to the US from Germany by way of winning the immigration lottery, the program that is in the news these days. Rather than continue to work as an engineer he started his own business which consisted of helping people fill out the paper work to enter the lottery. It was quite complex and he would charge $75 to properly fill out the forms and submit them. He put ads in magazines around the world mostly in Africa and he would get letters requesting his help. He went on vacation and asked me to go to the post office each day and collect his mail. On average he would receive 10 letters per day and each contained $75. It would take him only ten minutes to fill out the forms so he had a nice income. He told me that in some small African communities the whole clan would donate to come up with the $75 so that one person might have a chance to win. Each year he would have a number of winners and he would use that in his ads. The lottery system is the only way that most people have a chance to get to America. Yes, by the way, that is $750 per day for six days a week or over $200,000 per year.