End the Visa Lottery Now!

Of all the dozens of immigration laws, the most flawed is the Visa Lottery that randomly awards 50,000 visas annually to individuals regardless of their skills or education. Once selected, the winners come to the United States as permanent residents. This year, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Department of State received more than 15 million applications. The record 15 million applicants is about 25 percent above last year’s total and 2.5 times greater than five years ago. Since its inception in 1990, the diversity visa has been rampant with fraud.  A Center for Immigration Studies’ report found that foreign nationals commonly apply for the lottery program multiple times under many different aliases. In addition, the visa lottery program has spawned a cottage industry featuring sponsors in the U.S. who falsely promise success to applicants for a large “fee.” Yet, despite its long history of fraud and abuse coupled with the insanity of issuing 50,000 instant work permits during a period of 9 percent U.S. unemployment, efforts to end the Visa Lottery have been unsuccessful. In December 2005, the United States House of Representatives voted 273-148 to add an amendment to a border enforcement bill (H.R. 4437) that would abolish the diversity visa. Even though the State Department’s Inspector General Howard Krongard testified to the House Judiciary Committee that the program had huge loopholes and presented an easy way for terrorists to enter the country, the Senate never passed the bill. More recent attempts to kill the diversity visa include Virginia U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte’s H.R. 1430, the SAFE for America Act first introduced in 2007 and his reintroduced 2009 version, H.R. 2305. Neither became law. Undeterred, Goodlatte is trying again. Last week CAPS issued a legislative alert asking concerned Americans to contact their Congressional representatives in support of Goodlatte’s Security and Fairness Enhancement (SAFE) for America Act, HR 704 which would completely end the diversity visa. In its bulletin, CAPS reminded activists that more than twenty years ago, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, recommended the lottery be eliminated. Goodlatte is confident. “More and more people [foreign national applicants] are learning about this program and are dumbfounded that we have it in the first place. Our chances have never been better to kill it.” Among the bill’s California cosponsors are representatives Brian Billbray, Elton Gallegly and Brad Sherman.