Worldwide angst over possible end to Diversity Visa Lottery

Ahhhh! Whole villages in Ethiopia are sweating, Korean Pop Stars groupies are worried and so is the Soros-funded Center for American Progress that the Gang of Eight plus Grover Senate immigration bill (S.744) would abolish the “popular” program to bring more diversity to your American towns via a lottery.

Rep Donald M. Payne, Jr. from Newark, NJ: Not enough poor Africans are getting to my district! (he didn’t say that, I did!)

Note to readers:  These are not refugees we are writing about, they are 55,000 lucky lottery winners each year from countries where we don’t get enough immigrants.  This is not a joke!  I am not kidding!

Go here to see where your town’s diversity winners are coming from.

If you aren’t a regular reader of Korean Pop Entertainment news you would have no idea about the stressed-out Ethiopians or the New Jersey Congressman who says we aren’t letting enough Africans into the US.

Here is the story from KPopStarz about the “green card lottery:”

The green card lottery, a method through which at least 8 million foreigners wish to obtain their legal permanent residency, has been confirmed not to be cancelled for 2013 and 2014.

Although the odds of winning the green card lottery are not great, foreign hopefuls still have a chance of winning their legal status with a green card.

Just a few weeks ago, there was much speculation that the green card lottery would be taken away this year and that it was likely to be quietly cut. However, the US Embassy Press Secretary confirmed on Thursday that the green card application program will continue as usual for this year and next year.

According to the Armenpress on Thursday, US Embassy Press Secretary Taguhi Jahukyan said, “The Diversity Visa Program is continuing as usual for fiscal year 2013 and fiscal year 2014.”

While Congress has been discussing changes to immigration policy through new immigration bills, President Obama has not yet signed any immigration bill into law.

As the legislative process for changes in immigration policy is ongoing, no comment has been made on whether the green card lottery will continue onto 2015.

Just last year, at least 8 million foreigners submitted a green card application through the green card lottery. Only 55,000 green card applications were able to obtain a green card for themselves, their spouses, and their children.

The green card lottery is extremely popular, and foreigners would be very disappointed if the lottery program had been removed.

One green card lottery winner from Ethiopia said, “In my country, whole cities wait to hear the results of this lottery. I can’t believe they would take it away.”

The Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which issues winners a U.S. green card, started in 1995. Since then, thousands of foreigners have been granted immigrant visas and green cards.

One New Jersey House Representative, Donald Payne Jr. supported the continuance of the green card lottery program saying, “Diversity visas are one of the few ways people from Africa and the Caribbean can come to this country.”  [I guess the Congressman doesn’t know about refugee resettlement and asylum—ed]

You know it’s a bad program if the Center for American Progress (read all about CAP here) wants desperately to save it!

Here is what they say in an introduction to an informative “Infographic” (AN END TO DIVERSITY?—Ahhhhhh!):

The immigration reform bill currently being debated in the U.S. Senate, however, would eliminate the diversity-visa program and grant those who are eligible a small number of points in the new merit-based green-card allocations—explained in the infographic below. Without this visa category, immigration from certain low-sending regions would diminish further and would undermine the goal of welcoming immigrants from diverse backgrounds. The infographic below portrays the current distribution of diversity visas and highlights the disproportionate effect that the elimination of this category would have on migration from Africa.

Tell Rep. Payne that there are 100,000 plus Africans arriving in the US each year according to this useful graphic from CAP.  Eliminating the Diversity Visa could knock that number down by 20,000, but they will surely be picked up through whatever changes are made to immigration by the Gang (unfortunately, you can count on that):