Immigration Lotto Lunacy

[peejay 327]

Immigration Lotto Lunacy

by James R. Edwards, Jr.

Posted 03/03/2011 ET

If you did just one thing to start fixing our visa system, a good choice would be getting rid of the visa lottery. Now, both the Senate and the House have bills to do just that.

Since 1990, when liberals created the lottery, the United States has given away 55,000 permanent residency visas each year. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) and Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R.-Va.) have each proposed legislation that would do away with this needless visa program.

The program represents what’s wrong with our immigration system generally. Here’s the situation: The United States now gives out more than a million permanent visas every year. That’s more than four times the historical average—about a quarter million immigrants a year in our first two centuries, 1776 to 1976. Thus, in volume, we’re way over the norm.

Also, since 1965, visas go primarily to relatives of previous immigrants. No skills, education, literacy, English proficiency or other abilities are required of most people asking the United States of America to grant them the privilege of permanently living here. Most just need to be related by blood or marriage.

Being able to sponsor extended family for green cards drives “chain migration.” The original immigrant often ends up being responsible for long chains of close and distant relatives who move here. These immigrants often lack any appreciable attributes, qualities, or abilities that would advance the national interest.

Because the visa preference system puts relatives ahead of employment-based needs, family members will sneak across the border instead of waiting for their visa turn to come up. Many live here illegally until they receive notice from Uncle Sam that they can collect their chain migration visa.

Now add the visa lottery, known as the Diversity Immigrant Visa. It’s bad enough that relatives well outside the nuclear family get visas. It’s bad enough unskilled, uneducated relatives get visas before talented people. It’s bad enough that the current visa preference scheme spurs illegal immigration. But the visa lottery allocates green cards—the ticket to U.S. citizenship, chain migration, and taxpayer-funded benefits—purely by luck of the draw.

The visa lottery is quite popular in the Third World and in terrorist-supplying states. It starts 55,000 brand new migration chains every year. It prompts fraud and abuse. And the lottery poses a national security threat.

“Unlike other immigrant visa categories, the Diversity Visa allows people to immigrate to the United States without having any connection to the country,” Hatch recently explained at the Heritage Foundation. “In other words, the applicants may not have any family, employment, or even an economic tie to the United States .”

That’s how the visa lottery works by design. Only foreigners without U.S. ties may apply. Only those from countries that supply America the fewest immigrants are eligible.

Thus, some 1.7 million Bangladeshis filed for the visa lottery in 2008 alone. So did 685,000 Nigerians and 620,000 Ukrainians. Yet only about 25,000 Bangladeshis’ names were chosen for visas from 1995 to 2006. For Nigerians that decade, it was about 35,000. For Ukrainians, 32,000. But each winner gets to sponsor many more for chain migration visas.

Because the odds of winning are so slim, fraud plagues the Diversity Visa (DV) lottery. A 2007 Government Accountability Office report said, “The DV program is vulnerable to fraud committed by and against DV applicants.”

The GAO cited an entire industry that facilitates lottery application. These scammers also facilitate fake documents, fake identities, sham marriages, multiple entries by the same individual, etc.

A 2003 State Department inspector general’s report found serious fraud and abuse in the visa lottery, as well as risks to national security. The fraud included multiple applications and lack of evidence that many applicants’ “education” equaled U.S. high schooling.

The visa lottery increases America’s national security risk. Recent top nations of origin of visa lottery winners include Nigeria, Iran, Algeria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. We’re talking state sponsors of terrorism and countries that the U.S. monitors as major sources of terrorists.

"You can take young people out of the madrassas [Muslim schools] that have no record of any activity with a terrorist organization but are loyal followers of Osama bin Laden," Goodlatte told a "Fox News" reporter.

Goodlatte’s HR 704, "SAFE for America Act," would end the visa lottery program. Hatch’s S 332, the "Strengthening Our Commitment to Legal Immigration and America’s Security Act," would terminate the visa lottery.

The Senate bills also would do a number of other very beneficial, overdue things. For instance, it would end the Obama administration’s abuse of discretionary measures for granting de facto amnesty, finally set up a mandatory exit system to track the departure of foreign visitors, and require the IRS to notify an employer of a mismatched Social Security number for an employee.

The Hatch and Goodlatte bills should become high legislative priorities, given the real threats and tremendous problems they would address.

Mr. Edwards is coauthor of The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=42094

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Without entertaining the national security bull that's presented as reason to abolish the DV program, I agree that it should be abolished - and perhaps replaced with a program that allows for qualification based immigration regardless of country of origin.

[Dakine10 5,452]

Immigration Lotto Lunacy

by James R. Edwards, Jr.

Posted 03/03/2011 ET

If you did just one thing to start fixing our visa system, a good choice would be getting rid of the visa lottery.

Really? The one biggest fix is getting rid of the visa lottery. Easy to see why the system is broken if this is the best the so called "experts" can come up with.

[Zero Sum 305]

Really? The one biggest fix is getting rid of the visa lottery. Easy to see why the system is broken if this is the best the so called "experts" can come up with.

I agree that the lottery system needs at least an upgrade.

[Dakine10 5,452]

I agree that the lottery system needs at least an upgrade.

I agree too, but the overall impact of the lottery system on immigration is minimal.

It's like saying the biggest thing we can do to fix the deficit is cut funding for the national water polo team.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I agree too, but the overall impact of the lottery system on immigration is minimal.

It's like saying the biggest thing we can do to fix the deficit is cut funding for the national water polo team.

That's true but I think we could do with 55K qualified immigrants annually instead of having people win the right to move here. What the ** business does the government have running a casino with green cards being the grand prize?

[Dakine10 5,452]

That's true but I think we could do with 55K qualified immigrants annually instead of having people win the right to move here. What the ** business does the government have running a casino with green cards being the grand prize?

That would be great if they can work out the logistics of it. Here's how Canada used to do it with their points based system. Not sure if they still do it this way.

http://www.workpermit.com/canada/points_calculator.htm

Last time I was in Canada (2005) there was a documentary about how they had a shortage of doctors AND probably the highest percentage of doctors working as cab drivers of anywhere in the world. Basically a foreign doctor would score well on the educational and financial part of the points system, but they would get to Canada and their medical degree was not recognized.

A lot of people want to do away with the H1B visa too. Maybe get rid of the H1B and the lottery and have a category for skilled immigrant in an area of high need. Numbers would vary by year based on need.

[Zero Sum 305]

I agree too, but the overall impact of the lottery system on immigration is minimal.

It's like saying the biggest thing we can do to fix the deficit is cut funding for the national water polo team.

Ha ha

There's just a great deal of emotional jerking on this one.

[Zero Sum 305]

That would be great if they can work out the logistics of it. Here's how Canada used to do it with their points based system. Not sure if they still do it this way.

http://www.workpermit.com/canada/points_calculator.htm

Last time I was in Canada (2005) there was a documentary about how they had a shortage of doctors AND probably the highest percentage of doctors working as cab drivers of anywhere in the world. Basically a foreign doctor would score well on the educational and financial part of the points system, but they would get to Canada and their medical degree was not recognized.

A lot of people want to do away with the H1B visa too. Maybe get rid of the H1B and the lottery and have a category for skilled immigrant in an area of high need. Numbers would vary by year based on need.

Universities and brain trusts would need an alternate visa that allowed recruitment of top-notch personnel since its clear that at the highest academic levels, we're falling way behind.

[NigeriaorBust 4,087]

The lottery systems is about providing balance to the US population. To be a qualifying country your country must be underrepresented in the US population. To qualify you must also have an education. These are for the most part also countries that aren't part of the VWP so they don't have free access to the US to shop for a green card granting spouse. Nigeria isn't on the list of terrorist countries. That was a brief passing right after the undie bomber. I can bet that people that enter the borders on other visa types are as a whole less educated. If they applied the same standard to family visas , a lot of us would be in trouble. Attacking the visa lottery is just a poorly hidden attempt to promote a more white immigrant population.

[peejay 327]

Attacking the visa lottery is just a poorly hidden attempt to promote a more white immigrant population.

What a joke! The race card gets thrown out on the table once again.

Your assertions are rather lame considering that the vast majority of US immigration is non-white. But let's not let the facts get in the way of your prejudices.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

What a joke! The race card gets thrown out on the table once again.

Your assertions are rather lame considering that the vast majority of US immigration is non-white. But let's not let the facts get in the way of your prejudices.

And what, pray tell is this slanted article if not a ranting diatribe against the current crop of, by your own assertion, non-whites?

Personally I don't think too highly of this particular Visa, but it is hardly all that ails our nation...

[peejay 327]

And what, pray tell is this slanted article if not a ranting diatribe against the current crop of, by your own assertion, non-whites?

You are about like Cleo...you put your own biased spin on other people's posts. Whatever.......

[Danno 1,228]

THis specific program not only should be dropped, we should go back... find out who sponsored the start of this and prosecute them.

It was just a retarded idea.

If we have so many jobs we can't fill them, bring in those qualified people.

You are about like Cleo...you put your own biased spin on other people's posts. Whatever.......

Shhh he thinks there are no whites copping a free Visa on this program.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

You are about like Cleo...you put your own biased spin on other people's posts. Whatever.......

My biased spin? Your comment was self contradicting. Felt it needed pointing out.