Thoughts on the Green Card Lottery

The DV-2007, Diversity Visa lottery, known also as the green card lottery, is a creature of Congressional efforts to whiten-up the color of immigration to the United States. The first lottery in the modern series, was known as the "Irish Lottery," because the law leaned so much to granting visas to Irish nationals. At that time, many people - including myself - were sympathetic to Irish concerns about immigration. The Irish economy had tanked, unemployment there was over-the-top, and large numbers of undocumented Irish were suffering under the same exploitation faced by other immigrants. Then, advocates for these other, also suffering immigrants, forced Congress to broaden the eligibility rules to include natives of most countries. Excluded now are only natives of countries whose natives received more than 50,000 immigrant visas in the five years prior.

I opposed the Irish lottery and those that followed. I’m pleased that many of my readers will get green cards under the program. But the green card lottery is a poor substitute for liberalizing the rules for lawful immigration. The lottery tells the world that the United States has thrown up its hands in desperation about who deserves the privilege of immigrating to the United States. We can do better.