Three years ago, Uncle Sam had an idea that was vintage free market, though a bit peculiar: Sell U.S. citizenships for $1-million a pop. Hence, by order of Congress, some cash-laden foreigners could jump to the head of the immigration line, in front of the tired and poor, if they could invest $1-million and create at least 10 jobs in the United States. But many of the millionaires America had its eyes on _ they were dubbed "yacht people" as a counterpoint to "boat people" _ have surveyed the marketplace and decided to take their business elsewhere. They have found that countries such as Canada offer a better deal. When the millionaires program began in 1991, Congress and immigration experts, fearing an international stampede, set a cap of 10,000 visas per year. As of today, not even a thousand millionaires have been lured by the prospect of American citizenship, let alone the 20,000 applications and $20-billion in investments Congress had expected by now. "They were smoking something when they wrote it," said Harold Ezell, a former regional immigration commissioner whose law practice in Newport Beach, Calif., has shepherded a few of the millionaire immigrants through the program's bureaucratic maze. But many immigrants who had been enterprising enough to make a million dollars did some simple comparison shopping and concluded that Canada was a much better buy. In Canada, the asking price for citizenship has been $200,000, the tax burden lower and there are no strict requirements about the kinds of businesses or jobs created. What's more, as Canadians, the immigrant millionaires can ultimately get visas to live and work in the United States if they still wish to. "We've shot ourselves in the foot," Ezell said. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 881 millionaires have applied since 1991, and less than half have been approved. Meanwhile, Canada has received more than 10,000 investors who have injected $2-billion into its economy and created 11,000 jobs. The program has been so successful that the government recently upped the asking price to $270,000, said Guy Pilote, a Canadian official. The U.S. program offered immigrant millionaires conditional residency for a two-year trial period. If the businesses they created _ and the jobs _ still existed after that, the investors would get permanent residency eventually leading to citizenship. If the investor settled in a rural area, the program required only a $500,000 investment. U.S. immigration has traditionally been geared toward allowing in refugees and relatives of U.S. residents and in offering residency to skilled people who find jobs as nurses, university professors or scientists. Although foreign businessmen can get visas to live and work in the United States, these permits are temporary. The investor program offered citizenship, not just temporary residence, to entrepreneurs. "I would compare this to a situation where if there were two siblings, one who went into business and the other got a Ph.D, we could under our laws invite the Ph.D, but there was no way to invite the entrepreneur even if he could make a bigger economic contribution," said Warren Leiden, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers' Association in Washington. But the investor program failed because it was a belated and botched effort to imitate Canada's success and was vastly overpriced, U.S. immigration attorneys say. Canada and Australia both instituted their investor programs in the 1980s, when uncertainty about Hong Kong's future was high and Asian economic tigers like Taiwan and South Korea generated hundreds of wealthy businessmen seeking greener pastures. By the time the United States came up with its program and Congress finished debating it in 1990, times had changed. The United States was drifting into recession, Asian stock markets were booming and not many investors willing to throw a million dollars into an uncertain U.S. economy could be found. "This could have been a marvelous way to attract good people and resolve our balance of payments problem and unemployment," said Bill Flynn, a Tampa attorney. Instead, the program was so bureaucratic and "user-unfriendly" that many businessmen sensibly stayed away from it, he said. If a business did not do well enough in its first two years, the investor could be denied residency and deported. "Businesses do well or badly in good times and bad," Flynn said. "There's no effort here to help people if they take a good-faith risk that for some reason fails." "It's sort of naive to think that U.S. permanent residence (leading to citizenship) is something people would blindly seek," said Charles Miller, an attorney in Los Angeles. Many millionaires are discouraged by U.S. tax laws, which would tax a citizen's worldwide income, not just money earned in the United States. And while the program seems designed for the super-wealthy jet-setter with extra money to purchase American citizenship, Miller says, it makes no effort to attract energetic Asian entrepreneurs who may have just a few hundred thousand dollars but might galvanize the U.S. economy as they have their own. Many of the millionaires who have been approved have sunk their investments in hotels and real estate, creating low-paying jobs and anchoring the bulk of their money safely in property. "Dollars don't build a country," Miller said. "You want the entrepreneurial spirit that you see in Asia. It's not a few wealthy people who built Hong Kong. It's the middle class. If we allowed some of these people who have a nice nest egg and can bring some of their energy to set up businesses like gas stations and restaurants, you'd get immigrants like this country got a hundred years ago from Europe who built the economy of this country." Although the U.S. program has, by all accounts, been a flop, one former congressman who helped write the law says he would rather see the program die than soften its requirements to attract more wallets. "The money was a part of it, but there's a lot of money in the world," said Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic House member from Connecticut who now practices immigration law. "The principal idea was to attract people who directly create jobs." Who are the people who have so far shown a desire to buy their way into the United States? The Immigration and Naturalization Service won't say, but its statistics show that the most applications have come from entrepreneurs in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Britain, Canada and India. There have also been applications from Burma, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Croatia. They propose investing in real estate, hotels, sports goods stores, child-care centers and garment factories. Neither INS officials nor immigrations lawyers would disclose the names of any of those who have participated in the program. Morrison opposes reducing the million-dollar threshold or easing the responsibility of creating 10 jobs. "The question is, to what extent do you sell admission to the United States? The idea that all you have to do is deposit a million dollars would seem to be crossing the line." A relatively spacious country like Canada, with 27-million people living in an area larger than the United States, can afford to welcome entrepreneurs with few strings attached, Morrison said. But he said the United States, with already 250-million people and growing by 1-million immigrants a year, should be more choosy. Another immigration attorney said that since the program blatantly solicits the wealthy, it might as well demand $2-million. "Basically, what people are doing is buying passports," said Edward Gallagher, a Washington attorney who steers his foreign clients toward other less ambitious investor visa programs. Considering that an immigrant's parents, children and eventually brothers and sisters can also migrate, the United States might as well keep a higher sticker price, Gallagher said.