If the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill passes as it currently stands, the diversity visa, known better by some as the Green Card Lottery, will be one of the visa programs to be cancelled. The diversity visa program enjoys a wonderful reputation outside of the United States because of the hope and opportunity it has provided millions of immigrants over three decades. Most United States citizens are not familiar with the program, so they have not seen the benefit not just to foreigners, but to the country as a whole. It would be a great disappointment if the diversity visa lottery were eliminated, especially considering all of the other immigrant groups that are being provided for in the immigration bill.
Large immigrant groups that stand to benefit in the Senate bill include undocumented immigrants, highly skilled foreign nationals, and desperately needed farmworkers. There are also provisions for very specialized groups. 20,000 employment-based visas are set aside for meat processing workers thanks to lobbying from North Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham. 10,500 visas are included for Irish immigrants with a high school diploma or higher at the request of New York Senator Chuck Schumer. Florida's Senator Marco Rubio has added visas for cruise ship repair workers and temporary disaster relief workers, who could work in the U.S. when a tropical storm or hurricane strikes. Sen. Michael Bennet has requested high-skilled visas for ski instructors for his home state of Colorado. Countries such as Canada, Poland, South Korea, and Ireland have hired lobbyists or relied on their ambassadors to bargain for influence in the formation of the immigration bill. The list of specialized or little-known immigrant groups receiving benefits in the bill goes on.
When compared to many other U.S. visa programs and immigration reform proposals, the diversity visa program is tiny in scale. 55,000 applicants from all over the world are selected at random for the privilege to apply for a U.S. green card. Almost 8 million people applied last year, with the applicant pool peaking at almost 14 million in 2008. Currently diversity visas account for 5% of all green cards issued per year.
Diversity visas don't select for skills, education, or wealth, so what are their value to the United States?
The Diversity visa lottery is truly a random lottery, with the only application requirement being a high school diploma or two years of work experience. Applying to the lottery is completely free and is done entirely through the U.S. Dept. of State website. Applicants don't even need to speak English. To some Americans, the relative lack of discretion in choosing winners is upsetting. Many argue that the diversity visa lottery adds little value to the economy because of the lack of selectivity in the application, which has not been proven. Even if an immigrant isn't highly skilled, he or she has to prove they are motivated to come here and succeed by jumping through several hoops to get approved, as well as leave most of their friends and family behind in their home country.
The requirements for applying to the lottery are simple and lenient, but winning the lottery is almost impossible, and much higher discrimination is enacted on the applicants after they have been selected as winners. Any given diversity visa applicant will have less than a ½ of 1% chance of winning the lottery, though it varies by country of origin. And even if they are lucky enough to win, the applicant must go through the complicated process of getting approved for the green card. Screening for health, criminal, terrorist, and/or national security issues is a key part of the U.S. government's diversity visa approval process. The costs to procure a green card total over of USD$1,700, not including travel to consulates, time spent gathering evidence, and possible legal assistance. This is a hardship for many winners, which explains why in countries such as Senegal, the rate of successful procurement of green cards after winning the lottery is only about 14%. Another important element of the program is that if the winner fails to obtain their visa within one year of winning the lottery, their entry is voided and they are no longer eligible to come to the United States.
Do diversity visas use up U.S. government resources that could be used on other immigrant visas?
No. Many assume the green card lottery monopolizes resources used to process other types of more "significant visas. The fact is that diversity visas are processed completely separately from family-based and employment visas, so they are not contributing to the backlog. One of the reasons diversity visas seem to be processed more quickly than other types is because of the 1-year deadline imposed on all green card lottery winners. The program is also extremely cost-effective: the fees imposed on the immigrants obtaining diversity green cards pay for the diversity visa program.
Which countries benefit from the diversity visa program?
Application to the diversity visa lottery is restricted to immigrants from countries that have low levels of immigration, and most of its winners currently hail from Africa, Eastern Europe, and more recently, central Asia. This can change from year to year, as each country's eligibility is determined by having less than 50,000 immigrants to the United States (not including refugees or asylum-seekers) cumulatively over the last 5 years, with no single country being allowed more than 7% of the total visas. Many of these countries contain citizens with little to no connection to the United States, yet they are ready and willing to move halfway around the world for a chance to make something of themselves in the land of opportunity.
African and African-American groups have historically supported the diversity visa lottery because it is one of the primary avenues for African immigrants to obtain legal residence in the U.S. From the time of the U.S. abolition of slavery in the 1860s all the way until the diversity visa program was implemented in the early 1990s, immigration from Africa to the United States was almost nonexistent. Since 1995, approximately 50% of all diversity visa lottery visa winners have been from Africa. There is no other visa program in the U.S. that supports African immigration as the diversity visa program does, nor will there be if the current reform bill passes.
Won't the new bill still consider "diversity visa-type applicants even if the program is eliminated?
The solution proposed by the Senate Gang of Eight to compensate for the end of the diversity visa program seems practical enough at first glance: rank potential immigrants on a point value system. In the bill, holding a Master's Degree, working for a "high-demand occupation, or being a business entrepreneur is worth 10 points. A PhD is 15 points. Each year of employment experience will be worth 2 or 3 points. A "diversity immigrant designation will only earn 5 points, which seems to show that diversity applicants will be pushed to the bottom of the pile.
Perhaps the most compelling argument against cancelling the diversity visa is that if we can grant thousands of visas to countries like Ireland for the sake of goodwill and to commemorate a shared immigrant past, or grant visas for cruise ship workers and ski instructors to satisfy special interests, then no one should have an issue with the diversity visa lottery. The diversity visa program has fostered a great amount of goodwill abroad at almost no cost to the United States. The diversity visa lottery is both good for national interest and the international reputation of the United States. It functions as a public relations program that sends the message that America welcomes all, that you can be from anywhere and achieve anything here. It reminds us of the famous words stamped on our own Statue of Liberty: "From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. ˜Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she with silent lips. ˜Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'