Posted on 04/29/2004 6:59:15 PM PDT by truth4
Diversity immigration lottery may be canceled
WASHINGTON - A House subcommittee may consider eliminating a visa lottery program that helps about 50,000 aliens enter the country each year.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., has sponsored legislation that would eliminate the Diversity Visa Program, created in 1990 to increase diversity in the U.S. immigrant population. The program aims to provide nationals of countries with low U.S. immigration rates the opportunity to apply for immigrant visas.
Goodlatte said the program is rife with potential fraud, saying some applicants apply repeatedly a year although the law allows applicants to apply just once a year. He also worries that the program could provide a loophole through which terrorists could enter the country.
On July 4, 2002, Hesham Hedayet killed two and injured several others in an attack at Los Angeles International Airport. Hedayet earlier received his green card under the program. Goodlatte cites that case as an example of a diversity visa gone bad.
At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims on Thursday, Anne Patterson, deputy inspector general of the State Department, said the program has eliminated some fraud through better technology.
Currently, those who apply multiple times, she said, are disqualified from receiving visas for that year. She said her office has recommended that those who apply multiple times in a year be barred permanently from future diversity lotteries.
Others say the program has larger problems. Jan Ting, a Temple University law professor, said the program unfairly discriminates against Asians and Latin Americans. He also said the program is inconsistent with national priorities. Even as 50,000 immigrants enter the country through the lottery program, he said, spouses and children of legal permanent residents are kept out of the country.
Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas, ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said soccer player Freddy Adu is among those who have benefited from the program. She said aliens with diversity visas are inspected just as much as all other immigrants. Instead, she said, Congress needs to examine and overhaul the entire U.S. immigration system - not just the diversity visas. "The system is broken and needs to be fixed," she said.
Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., chairman of the subcommittee, said he is inclined to support Goodlatte's bill, but will have to study it before acting.
Charles Nyaga, a Kenyan who received a diversity visa in 1998, said the program would have been great, had it actually helped keep him in the country. The Immigration and Naturalization Service never completed his processing. He now is fighting deportation.
"Law-abiding people who follow the rules, pay the required fees and rely on the government's procedures should not be punished because of government inaction," he said
Diversity as a goal in itself IS bad. It is about time the congresscritters saw that.
Latin Americans ARE THE PROBLEM. They're pouring over at the rate of over a million a year. There is absolutely no unfair discrimination against them. They're an invading army. We need to get rid of all that are here, and stop any more from coming for a decade or two until those who are here legally learn engligh, get off welfare, get jobs and become contributiong Americans.
And with Teddy and the democrats even if the program lets in terrorists from the Middle East who commit acts of violence they'll never admit it's a failure.
Ted likely set this up so that some Irish could continue to immigrate. The Ted Kenedy 1965 immigration system ended up being dominated by the asians, and mexicans who learned how to game the system. ( It opens the door to more of the same group who got in last year.) At the current time, almost no whites get legal immigration.
Kennedy may have mucked up the immigration system but it wasn't to advantage the Irish over anyone else. He's just a hopeless drunk.
Prof. Ting of Temple University must be on the pipe. Asians and Latinos are nowhere underrepresented in the immigrant mix.
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