Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery ﾃつ* Is This for Real?

By Nathan Tabor

E-mail marketing is amazing. Congress has passed anti-spam laws, but
the
junk e-mails just keep on coming. Hereﾃつｹs one that showed up in my junk
e-mail box just the other day.

ﾃつｳWin Your Lifetime Chance to Live and Work in USA Now!ﾃつｲ the headline
screamed.

According to this e-mail ad, this year's 2005 Diversity Immigrant Visa
Lottery is making available 50,000 Diversity Visas, granting PERMANENT
U.S.
residence and work visas to eligible persons worldwide. The text of the
e-mail touted this golden promise:

ﾃつｳYou can work, live, leave and re-enter the country.ﾃつｲ
ﾃつｳWinners will receive a FREE airline ticket to the USA.ﾃつｲ
ﾃつｳWin Your Lifetime Chance to Live and Work in the USA Now!ﾃつｲ

Furthermore, the e-mail claimed, this fantastic Green Card Lottery
program
was established under the Immigration and Nationality Act and was
approved
by the U.S. Congress. To apply, just click on the convenient website
link
provided.

What? Win your once-in-a-lifetime chance to live and work permanently
in the
USA? I mean, we have the Mexican government producing pamphlets and
videos
teaching people how to sneak into the United State illegally, and the
Minutemen Militia patrolling our borders, and at the same time thereﾃつｹs
actually an annual lottery for Green Cards?

Well, Iﾃつｹll be honest ﾃつ* I had never heard of such a thing. The
convenient
link in my e-mail didnﾃつｹt work, so I went to Google to check it out.
What I
found there amazed me: a veritable cottage industry of competing
websites
that all charged a ﾃつｳprocessing feeﾃつｲ to help foreign would-be immigrants
submit their lottery applications online. This had all transpired since
2003, when the law was changed to phase out applications by mail and to
require online registration only.

Of course, applicants could register themselves for free at the U.S.
State
Department website, but each unofficial, non-governmental site had a
long
list of reasons telling why they were better and how they could help
the
applicants avoid being ﾃつｳdisqualifiedﾃつｲ from the computerized drawing.
Just
register through their website, pay their application fees, and they
will
forward your application to the official entry site -- and if you win a
spot, why, theyﾃつｹll even give you a FREE airline ticket to America from
anywhere in the world!

This was all news to me, but apparently, Congress did in fact approve
the
Diversity Immigrant Visa Program back in 1986 as a means of helping a
new
generation of Irish immigrants get to America. The law has gradually
changed
over time, but the bottom line today is this: 50,000 Diversity Visas
are
made available annually to people born in countries that donﾃつｹt
traditionally
send a large number of immigrants to the U.S.A.

I was happy to note that applicants born in countries like China,
Russia,
Mexico, Colombia, and several others ﾃつ* including Canada and the United
Kingdom ﾃつ* are not eligible to enter this particular lottery. Whatﾃつｹs
more,
there are certain qualifications. Applicants must either: (1) possess
the
earned equivalent of a 12-year American high school education, or (2)
have
two years actual training and/or experience at one of a long list of
occupations.

So if you happen to be an aerospace or nuclear engineer, a chemist or a
computer programmer, a judge or a lawyer or a surgeon, or perhaps an
astronomer or a biochemist ﾃつ* or virtually any kind of teacher or
educational
administrator ﾃつ* then America welcomes with open arms your expertise
from
abroad.

But then, we also welcome foreign nationals with the requisite two
years
experience as embalmers, carpet installers, potters, stonemasons,
millwrights, and of course, strippers. I guess we just donﾃつｹt have
enough
homegrown American girls who know how to dance naked.

Pardon me, but I think some of our immigration laws are just plain bad
public policy. Why, at a time when the American dollar is tanking, our
balance of trade deficit is over $700 billion per year, American jobs
are
being exported abroad and American citizens are out of work, are we
running
a government-sponsored lottery to give out permanent lifetime Green
Cards ﾃつ*
and all the welfare benefits that accompany them ﾃつ* to foreigners?

Why is there even serious debate in Congress over approving President
Bushﾃつｹs
ill-advised, so-called ﾃつｳGuest Workerﾃつｲ proposal that would allow amnesty
to
millions of illegal aliens and allow them to stay in this country
indefinitely?

I say we need to declare a moratorium on immigration of all kinds,
legal and
illegal. We need to seal off our borders against potential terrorists,
enforce our deportation laws, and give our reeling nation a chance to
get
stabilized again. We owe no less to our children. Once we achieve this
we
can implement a sound and reasonable immigration policy.

I canﾃつｹt help wondering how many millions of foreigners around the world
pay
fees to apply online for these 50,0000 annual lottery slots. No wonder
all
those companies can afford to hand out free plane tickets to the
relative
handful of immigrants who actually win. There are so many things wrong
with
this type of false hope and advertising, and there are so many problems
with
our current immigration policies.

It is time to stop playing games and protect the sovereignty of the
United
States of America!