Visa Lottery
by Nathan Tabor

E-mail marketing is amazing. Congress has passed anti-spam laws, but the junk e-mails just keep on coming. Here’s one that showed up in my junk e-mail box just the other day.

“Win Your Lifetime Chance to Live and Work in USA Now!” the headline screamed.

According to this e-mail ad, this year's 2005 Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery is making available 50,000 Diversity Visas, granting PERMANENT U.S. residence and work visas to eligible persons worldwide. The text of the e-mail touted this golden promise:

“You can work, live, leave and re-enter the country.”

“Winners will receive a FREE airline ticket to the USA.”

“Win Your Lifetime Chance to Live and Work in the USA Now!”

Furthermore, the e-mail claimed, this fantastic Green Card Lottery program was established under the Immigration and Nationality Act and was approved by the U.S. Congress. To apply, just click on the convenient website link provided.

What? Win your once-in-a-lifetime chance to live and work permanently in the USA? I mean, we have the Mexican government producing pamphlets and videos teaching people how to sneak into the United State illegally, and the Minutemen Militia patrolling our borders, and at the same time there’s actually an annual lottery for Green Cards?

Well, I’ll be honest – I had never heard of such a thing. The convenient link in my e-mail didn’t work, so I went to Google to check it out. What I found there amazed me: a veritable cottage industry of competing websites that all charged a “processing fee” to help foreign would-be immigrants submit their lottery applications online. This had all transpired since 2003, when the law was changed to phase out applications by mail and to require online registration only.

Of course, applicants could register themselves for free at the U.S. State Department website, but each unofficial, non-governmental site had a long list of reasons telling why they were better and how they could help the applicants avoid being “disqualified” from the computerized drawing. Just register through their website, pay their application fees, and they will forward your application to the official entry site -- and if you win a spot, why, they’ll even give you a FREE airline ticket to America from anywhere in the world!

This was all news to me, but apparently, Congress did in fact approve the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program back in 1986 as a means of helping a new generation of Irish immigrants get to America. The law has gradually changed over time, but the bottom line today is this: 50,000 Diversity Visas are made available annually to people born in countries that don’t traditionally send a large number of immigrants to the U.S.A.

I was happy to note that applicants born in countries like China, Russia, Mexico, Colombia, and several others – including Canada and the United Kingdom – are not eligible to enter this particular lottery. What’s more, there are certain qualifications. Applicants must either: (1) possess the earned equivalent of a 12-year American high school education, or (2) have two years actual training and/or experience at one of a long list of occupations.

So if you happen to be an aerospace or nuclear engineer, a chemist or a computer programmer, a judge or a lawyer or a surgeon, or perhaps an astronomer or a biochemist – or virtually any kind of teacher or educational administrator – then America welcomes with open arms your expertise from abroad.

But then, we also welcome foreign nationals with the requisite two years experience as embalmers, carpet installers, potters, stonemasons, millwrights, and of course, strippers. I guess we just don’t have enough homegrown American girls who know how to dance naked.

Pardon me, but I think some of our immigration laws are just plain bad public policy. Why, at a time when the American dollar is tanking, our balance of trade deficit is over $700 billion per year, American jobs are being exported abroad and American citizens are out of work, are we running a government-sponsored lottery to give out permanent lifetime Green Cards – and all the welfare benefits that accompany them – to foreigners?

Why is there even serious debate in Congress over approving President Bush’s ill-advised, so-called “Guest Worker” proposal that would allow amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and allow them to stay in this country indefinitely?

I say we need to declare a moratorium on immigration of all kinds, legal and illegal. We need to seal off our borders against potential terrorists, enforce our deportation laws, and give our reeling nation a chance to get stabilized again. We owe no less to our children. Once we achieve this we can implement a sound and reasonable immigration policy.

I can’t help wondering how many millions of foreigners around the world pay fees to apply online for these 50,0000 annual lottery slots. No wonder all those companies can afford to hand out free plane tickets to the relative handful of immigrants who actually win. There are so many things wrong with this type of false hope and advertising, and there are so many problems with our current immigration policies.

It is time to stop playing games and protect the sovereignty of the United States of America!

Nathan Tabor is a conservative political activist based in Kernersville, North Carolina. He has his BA in Psychology and his Master’s Degree in Public Policy. He is a contributing editor at www.theconservativevoice.com.

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