NumbersUSA Urges Congress to End Visa Lottery

 NUSA Government Relations Director Testifies Before House Subcommittee

 
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, NumbersUSA Government Relations Director Rosemary Jenks testified before the House Immigration, Border Security, and Claims Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary on the need to eliminate the visa lottery. 

“The visa lottery is inescapably and inexcusably a national origins-based policy,” said Jenks.  “It discriminates to the detriment of some and to the benefit of others based solely on a person’s nationality.  If we are serious about removing all discrimination from our laws, the lottery must go.  If we are serious about the rule of law itself, the lottery must go.”

 In 1963, President John F. Kennedy told Congress that a national origins-based immigration system “neither satisfies a national need nor accomplishes an international purpose.  In an age of interdependence among nations, such a system is an anachronism for it discriminates among applicants for admission into the United States on the basis of the accident of birth.”  

 The 1965 Amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 were intended to end national origins-based discrimination in United States immigration policy.  However, the visa lottery program is based explicitly on national origin and is elevated under the law to an equal level with the three primary, historical purposes of immigration policy – reunifying nuclear family, attracting workers with needed skills, and satisfying humanitarian obligations.  The visa lottery has nothing to do with any real or perceived intolerance on the part of Americans, but rather reflects which narrow special interests are able to influence Congress at any given time.  In fact, the visa lottery undermines any attempts to make our immigration policy coherent, and it creates false expectations that result in illegal immigration.

 Fifty-two percent of all lottery visas have been awarded to Europeans, who represent 56 percent of all immigrants since 1820 dispelling the notion that true diversity was the goal of the lottery.  The United States does not need to admit a single additional immigrant to ensure increasing ethnic and racial diversity in the U.S.  It is a demographic certainty.  Additionally, the legal immigration flow of around one million per year and another estimated million coming illegally, 50,000 lottery visas have very little impact on diversity, no matter who the beneficiaries are.    

“While the lottery is not effectively serving its stated goal, it is undermining our immigration system and our values as a nation, and built into it is a serious potential for physical harm to Americans,” said Jenks. “As long as a terrorist has not been added to the watchlist, he has nothing to fear.”

Because nationals of virtually every terrorist-sponsoring state are eligible to participate, the visa lottery presents a significant security threat.  Department of Homeland Security statistics show that about 54 percent of lottery winners are male, and about half are single and between the ages of 20 and 34. 

Click here for the full text of Jenks’ testimony.

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