i***i 发帖数: 1632 | 1 Bill to abolish visa lottery moves to full House
Published July 20, 2011 Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/07/20/bill-to-abolish-visa-lotte
WASHINGTON – Every year millions of would-be immigrants take a gamble and
submit their names for the U.S. government's annual visa lottery.
The odds of getting permission to move to the United States are slim at best
— nearly 15 million people applied in 2010 for 55,000 visas — and could
get slimmer.
A bill to abolish the annual lottery was referred by the Judiciary Committee
to the full House Wednesday.
Republicans who supported the bill introduced by Virginia Republican Bob
Goodlatte argued that problems of fraud and the potential for the program to
be exploited by terrorists make it a threat to national security.
"It's an open invitation for fraud and a jackpot for terrorists," committee
Chairman Lamar Smith said. The Texas Republican added that the goal of the
program, to increase the diversity of immigrants coming into the country,
has already been met with the more than 785,000 visas issued as part of the
program since 1995.
Democratic opponents, including Michigan Democrat John Conyers, countered
that eliminating the visa lottery would essentially end legal immigration
from African nations and reduce the overall number of visas available to all
immigrants.
"The diversity program has always been an important part of our immigration
system," Conyers said. "I'm looking to improve it. It provides a legal
option for qualified individuals. Without this program our immigration
system would look very different, and not in a good way."
Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee tried to amend the bill to ask the
Department of Homeland Security to review the program and make
recommendations to fix any flaws, but was rebuffed by Republicans who argued
the program has been studied before and each audit revealed significant
problems.
"It has long been fraught with fraud; fraud from applicants and third party
brokers," Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., said. "A lottery by its very nature
is a gamble and it's a gamble our national security cannot afford."
The visa lottery, first held in 1995, was designed to increase the number of
immigrants from the developing world and countries with historically low
rates of immigration to the United States. Each year about 90,000 names are
selected at random and that number is reduced to no more than 55,000 through
attrition, interviews and various eligibility rules.
This year's lottery results were scrapped when a computer program problem
was discovered. The software used to randomly pick winners somehow selected
about 90 percent of people who applied during the first day of the month-
long application period.
A federal judge in Washington last week dismissed a lawsuit from several
people initially told they had won. The State Department held a new lottery
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