Americans Lose in the Visa Lottery

7/21/2011
Virgil Goode

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 19-11 to pass Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (R-VA) SAFE Act to abolish the Diversity Visa Lottery. The bill will now go before the full House.

Most Americans do not even know that we have a lottery to give out Visas, but the rest of the world knows. In 2009, more than 15 million applications for the Visa Lottery were filled online. The only requirement is a high school diploma or some equivalency. The immigrants are selected by simply put the applications in a lottery. 50,000 Diversity Immigrant Visas are then granted random chance.

John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, decried the SAFE Act because the “diversity program has always been an important part of our immigration system," noting that it is the major source for African immigration.

In reality, the lottery is only 25 years old, and was never meant for African immigrants. The Lottery was created in 1986 under the guise of giving visas to Irish illegal aliens who were largely ineligible by the 1986 Amnesty. For years it was known as the “Irish Program.â€