I’ve concluded that I need to start writing more about other ways legal immigrants get to the US from Islamic terror-producing parts of the world.
This week tens of thousands learned whether they won the “diversity visa lottery” (aka green card lottery) and will soon be on the way to your town.
Overlooked by most everyone is this insane lottery set up with the premise that the US is lacking in diversity and needs more of it!
Previously, I wrote about the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery’ (see category here) a lot, but it has fallen off my radar screen as the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program has drawn so much attention.
Frankly I’ve been disappointed that no other private citizen investigators have taken up the cause of writing about this program, or about Temporary Protected Status, or Immigrant Food Stamp/welfare fraud. Those are all areas where someone should write exclusively on the topic!
Goodness knows there is enough material to keep someone going daily on just one of those topics.
Here the Washington Post tells us that earlier this week the new ‘winners’ were announced. By the way, refugee numbers do not count when determining ineligible countries, so we take lottery applicants from Cuba, Iraq, Burma, and Iran to name just a few.
WaPo (at The Denver Post):
On Tuesday, more than 14 million anxious people around the world will begin checking computers and smartphones in one of the strangest rituals of the U.S. immigration system. When the clock strikes noon in Washington, they will be able to visit a State Department website, enter their names, years of birth and 16-digit identification numbers. Then they will press “submit” to learn whether they have won one of the world’s most coveted contests: the U.S. green card lottery.
Each year, the Diversity Visa Lottery, as it is officially known, provides up to 55,000 randomly selected foreigners – fewer than 1 percent of those who enter the drawing – with permanent residency in the United States.
The current lottery coincides with an intense debate over immigration and comes amid policy changes that have made the country less welcoming to new arrivals. President Donald Trump has cracked down on illegal immigration and pressed forward with plans to build a wall along the border with Mexico. He has issued executive orders targeting foreign workers, refugees and travelers from certain majority-Muslim countries.
But he hasn’t said a word about the green card lottery.
Its days may be numbered, nonetheless. The lottery appears to conflict with the president’s call for a “merit-based” immigration system. And at least two bills in the Republican-controlled Congress seek to eliminate the program.
“The Diversity Lottery is plagued with fraud, advances no economic or humanitarian interest, and does not even deliver the diversity of its namesake,” according to a news release from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a co-sponsor of one of the bills.
Just what we need, 50,000 people annually, some with barely a high school education, and with spouses and families along for the ride!
The lottery’s premise is simple. It’s not connected to employment or family members in the United States. Instead, the only requirement is that entrants be adults with a high school diploma or two years of work experience. Winners can bring spouses and children. Citizens of countries that have sent 50,000 people to the United States in the past five years – such as Canada, China, India, Nigeria and Mexico – are ineligible to participate.
The lottery, which was launched in its present form in 1995, is especially beloved in Eastern Europe and Africa. In recent years, the two regions have accounted for more than two-thirds of lottery winners. In Liberia and other West African countries, nearly 10 percent of the population applies each year.
[….]
The program – operated from a consular center in Williamsburg, Kentucky [Mitch McConnell country!—ed] – has been on the chopping block before. It came under attack in 2002 after an Egyptian terrorist who killed two people in Los Angeles was found to be in the United States through his wife’s diversity visa. Mohamed Atta, another Egyptian and one of the 9/11 suicide pilots, had entered the lottery twice before entering the United States on a different visa to study aviation.
“If you’re a terrorist organization and you can get a few hundred people to apply to this from several countries . . . odds are you’d get one or two of them picked,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told The Washington Post in 2011 after introducing an ill-fated bill to kill the program.
Continue reading here.
I couldn’t find a list of the numbers (selected for 2018) from each country, but here are the countries eligible to participate in 2018 from Africa and Asia.
