"Any time you give an amnesty for people who have broken the law, that gives an incentive for more people to break the law," says Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, an Arlington group that lobbies to reduce immigration. Yet Beck acknowledges that he feels torn about Juan, who arrived at such a young age, saying that "on an individual basis, this sounds like the kind of person who you want to have some sort of leeway for." Where, then, does Juan belong?

More than 165,000 Russians participated in the United States' 2013 green-card lottery and 2,353 won, RIA-Novosti reported, citing U.S. State Department official David Donahue.

If you did just one thing to start fixing our visa system, a good choice would be getting rid of the visa lottery. Now, both the Senate and the House have bills to do just that.

Since 1990, when liberals created the lottery, the United States has given away 55,000 permanent residency visas each year. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) and Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R.-Va.) have each proposed legislation that would do away with this needless visa program.

In the wake of the botched Christmas Day terror attack, members of Congress are worried that extremists could use the State Department's diversity visa lottery as a means of getting to the U.S.

The State Department is planning to welcome thousands of immigrants from terror-watch list countries into the United States this year through a "diversity visa" lottery -- a giant legal loophole some lawmakers say is a "serious national security threat" that has gone unchecked for years.

More than 1 million immigrants became U.S. citizens last year, the largest surge in history, hastening the ethnic transformation of California's political landscape with more Latinos and Asians now eligible to vote.

Leading the wave, California's 300,000 new citizens accounted for nearly one-third of the nation's total and represented a near-doubling over 2006, according to a recent report by the U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics. Florida recorded the second-largest group of new citizens, and Texas claimed the fastest growth.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will designate Malta as a Visa Waiver Program (VWP) country on Dec. 30, 2009. Maltese nationals will be able to travel visa-free to the United States effective Dec. 30th.