"One per person -- this is a very good system," said Bishawjit Saha, owner of a Bangladeshi bookstore in Jackson Heights, Queens, where two college students set up shop recently to help with electronic applications.
But Saha and one of the college students also said that the ease of merging and searching such computer databases is frightening away some would-be applicants.
"A lot of people are fearful about how this is going to be used," said the student, Hamidul Hoq, who already has a green card.
Saha cited the case of an illegal immigrant grocery worker who has wavered about applying. The worker fears that if he enters identifying information online he could be giving himself up for deportation to the successors of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Department of Homeland Security.
Similar concerns reduced applications by the Irish in New York, said Siobhan Dennehy, executive director of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center in Queens.
"People are being cautious this year, more than any before," Dennehy said, noting that since Nov. 1, when this year's lottery opened, only a few hundred have showed up to apply online. Last year more than 2,500 applications forms were collected from the center.
But Patt, the State Department spokesman, said there were no plans to share the data with other agencies.
"The information is not being collected to look for people to deport," Patt said. "It's not being done as a tool for enforcement, it's being done for administrative improvement." When pressed, he added: "Would we make that information available if Homeland Security would make the request? I'm not saying we would deny it."
The Bangladeshi student, Hoq, was not reassured.
"That's my fear," he said, "they don't rule it out."
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