Sixth District U.S. Congressman Bob Goodlatte of the House Committee on the Judiciary is among those who urging consideration of legislation eliminating the annual visa lottery for foreign nationals who want to immigrate. Goodlatte, in real life, is an immigration lawyer. The annual national immigration lottery allows 50,000 aliens to become legal permanent residents of the U.S.
To participate in the program, a person has to come from a country that does not send many immigrants to the United States. State sponsors of terrorism are not excluded from the program.
“The visa lottery program poses a national security threat,” says Goodlatte. “Under the program, each successful applicant is chosen at random and given the status of permanent resident based on pure luck. Usually, immigrant visas are issued to foreign nationals who have an existing connection with a family member lawfully residing in the United States or with a U.S. employer … Under the visa lottery program, visas are awarded to immigrants at random without meeting such criteria.” In 2007, the General Accounting Office said that the visa lottery “is vulnerable to fraudulent activity committed by and against applicants…”
The same report said that “widespread use of fake documents, such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, and passports, presented challenges when verifying the identities of applicants and dependents.”
In addition, during the 109th Congress the State Department IG testified before Congress that the visa lottery “contains significant risks to national security from hostile intelligence officers, criminals and terrorists attempting to use the program for entry into the U.S. as permanent residents.”
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