Another 50,000 wannabe migrants to US learned if they won the lottery to America this week

05/07/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

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.

The WaPo tells us that Trump has not mentioned the Diversity Visa Lottery. Has any staff member told him about it?

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.

I learned something I didn’t know! Mohammad Atta tried twice to win the lottery, but ultimately got in (as sadly we know) using another legal visa.

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.

Open season begins Oct. 1 for FY2015 Diversity Visa Lottery

09/17/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I bet most of you reading RRW don’t know about this ‘ingenious’ (not!) lottery program the US State Department has been running for years (Congress made them do it!). You see we don’t have enough diversity in America’s immigrant population so each year the State Department selects 55,000 people (through a lottery system) who can legally come from around the world to live and work in America .

Cool graphic from 2009 Diversity Visa Lottery, most winners come from Africa and Middle East

However, once the number of immigrants from a certain country tops 50,000 in the previous 5 years, that country’s citizens are cut off from putting their name in the hat.

The program, sometimes called the Green Card lottery, began in 1995, see history here.

The State Department website is here. The countries and number of ‘winners’ for FY 2013 are here.

Nigeria (others) has been cut off for FY2015 and that is the subject of this short article at
Afrique Jet Actualité en Lignesubject.

BTW, I’m pretty sure the Gang of Eight’s Senate bill on “immigration reform” drops this program, but at the moment I can’t remember and am too lazy to go look it up (especially since the bill may be dying in this Congress). Supposedly the entrants under the Diversity lottery program are somewhat educated and come with some job training/experience (because Congress thinks we need more foreign workers to compete with Americans along with bringing the joys of multiculturalism to your towns and cities).

Nigeria barred from US visa lottery – Nigeria has been barred from the 2015 US Diversity Immigrant Visa Programme, according to the US State Department.

It said Nigeria was excluded from the DV-2015 because over 50,000 of its citizens have immigrated into the US in the last five years on the strength of the programme.

‘For DV-2015, natives of the following countries are not eligible to apply, because more than 50,000 natives of these countries immigrated to the United States in the previous five years: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam,’ the State Department said on its official website.

The DV 2015 Programme will begin 1 Oct. 2013 and run through 2 Nov. 2013.

PANA reports that the Diversity Immigrant Visa Programme, which is administered annually by the Department of State, provides for a class of immigrants known as “diversity immigrants,” from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the US.

The next time you hear someone (especially a Republican) say “legal immigration is fine, it’s illegal immigration I have a problem with” remember this LEGAL program and know that they don’t know what they are talking about!

Republicans would expand LEGAL immigration, including chain migration in their proposed bill

11/26/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, they would eliminate the Diversity Visa Lottery which I just mentioned here the other day. Advocates for mass immigration into the US fittingly call this diversity-enhancing program “new seed” immigration.

From AP at the Washington Post on Friday (while you were relaxing):

WASHINGTON — House Republicans still smarting from their poor showing among Hispanics in the presidential election are planning a vote next week on immigration legislation that would both expand visas for foreign science and technology students and make it easier for those with green cards to bring their immediate families to the U.S.

This is generally known as chain migration (Rep. Eric Cantor is all for it according the article):

Republicans are changing the formula this time by adding a provision long sought by some immigration advocates — expanding a program that allows the spouses and minor children of people with permanent residence, or green card, to wait in the United States for their own green cards to be granted.

There are some 80,000 of these family-based green cards allocated every year, but there are currently about 322,000 husbands, wives and children waiting in this category and on average people must wait more than two years to be reunited with their families. In that past that wait could be as long as six years.

Here is the part that sounds pretty good, but will go nowhere until people across America get involved and demand that their member of Congress KILL the Diversity Visa Lottery (sometimes called the “green card lottery”). In fact, anyone who really cared about the refugees would oppose this lottery program too because it imports the kind of immigrants who will be in direct competition with refugees for jobs.

But the legislation would still eliminate the Diversity Visa Lottery Program which gives out a similar 55,000 green cards a year to those from countries, including many in Africa, with traditionally low rates of immigration to the U.S. That prompted the House’s Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus to all come out against it in September.

The three caucuses said Republicans were trying to increase legal immigration for people they want by ending immigration for people they don’t want.

Ahhhhhh! That is exactly what the goal of our immigration policy should be—-TO TAKE THE IMMIGRANTS WE WANT, THOSE THAT WOULD BENEFIT AMERICA and not the ones that will drain our resources while refusing to assimilate.

Immigration lawyers: Looks like the Republicans are ready to talk, but this isn’t enough to satisfy us!

Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the bill is a message from Republicans that “we are here and we are ready to talk about immigration reform.”

But she said she doubted it will make much progress in the Senate during the short lame-duck session. People “are now starting to think about broader reform,” she said, adding that a limited bill that doesn’t increase visas won’t get a lot of support.

Send those squishy Republicans back to the drawing board because they don’t get it—-no matter what they do it isn’t going to be enough for the Hard Left and their friends in the corporate world who need low wage laborers.

For new readers: Check out wikipedia here on the Diversity Visa Lottery, it has a pretty good write-up. I’ve started a new category for the Diversity Visa but only have this post and a previous one in it so far. Type ‘diversity visa lottery’ into our search function for the many posts prior to the creation of the category.