Time to step up game in terror fight
‘Diversity’ lottery no way to pick immigrants
“Diversity visa lotteries” are the bump stocks of American immigration policy: Stupid, unnecessary and dangerous.
And, like the bump stocks, this idiotic greencard lotto is going to be difficult to get rid of for reasons that have nothing to do with the policy itself. Because everybody knows the policy is idiotic.
The concept of diversity visa lotteries is as bad as it sounds.
“The idea is to promote immigration from countries that are not well-represented in the family-based or employment-based systems,” Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies told me yesterday.
Or to put it another way, if you have no job, no skills and no family here to greet you when you arrive the visa lottery program says . . . “Come on down!”
Like most of America’s bad immigration laws, this one originated with Massachusetts’ own U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy. As The New York Times reported in 1991:
“The new law, co-sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, favors the Irish, who are allotted at least 40 percent of the places. Some critics describe it as a disguised amnesty for the more than 100,000 undocumented immigrants from the Republic of Ireland who are living illegally in America.”
Kennedy’s problem, as Vaughan explained, was that his immigration law of 1965 gave priority to low-skill, poorly-educated immigrants from Latin America and their families. How to take care of the Irish under that system? Diversity! The new crop of immigrants, Kennedy essentially argued, were too monochromatic.
“This is kind of a white person’s lottery,” Michael Maggio, a Washingtonbased immigration lawyer, told the Times.
Gee, I wonder if U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York will be making that argument?
Over the years, the numbers have changed to benefit different nations: Bangladesh, Poland, Sudan.
“Today, four of the top seven lottery nations are designated by the U.S. government as having problems with terrorism,” Vaughan says.
And the problem doesn’t end there, because once we get a random arrival from Exploding Backpackistan, our chain-migration policies kick in. One lottery “winner” turns into hundreds of largely unvetted immigrants to the U.S. All from a coin flip.
Seriously, is there a dumber way to decide who gets to immigrate to the U.S. than randomly giving away visas? We had 19.6 million foreigners enter the green-card lottery in 2011, competing for one of the 50,000 golden tickets. And we decided who to let in based on luck of the draw?
I support immigration based on merit, as in the new RAISE act proposed by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and supported by the White House. When you have 20 million people lining up to join your club, why not limit your membership to the best and brightest?
I don’t support, but I can at least understand, immigration based on conditions in other countries: Let people in the worst places escape to the world’s best.
What I cannot understand at all is a policy based on the premise of, “Hey, we don’t have many people coming here from your country, Sayfullo. Why don’t we randomly give you a visa just to mix things up. You know — variety is the spice of life? And your name means ‘Sword of Allah?’ Now that’s spicy!”
This is a country, not a cookbook. We’re not writing a recipe, we’re running a nation. Mixing in a pinch of Pakistanis and a touch of Turkmen simply for variety’s sake isn’t a policy. It’s pure stupidity.
In 2006, Schumer bragged about his role in creating the green-card lottery and he said he liked the results. “As I ride my bike around New York City on the weekends, I see what immigrants do for America.”
Fortunately for the New York senator, he wasn’t out on his bike this past Tuesday.