Why do we still run the Diversity Visa Lottery, anyway?!
The entitled world is up in arms over America’s botching of the annual Diversity Visa Lottery. A “glitch” in the State Department’s computer system has caused the bureaucracy to conduct a do-over of the random visa giveaway. WaPo reports:
Tens of thousands of would-be immigrants may be unable to move legally to the United States after the State Department said Friday that a computer glitch is forcing them to scrap the results of an annual worldwide lottery for U.S. visas.
More than 14 million applicants entered a lottery last fall for one of 50,000 visas distributed as part of the annual Diversity Visa Lottery, designed for people who would otherwise have little chance of legally entering the country. The program doesn’t require applicants to have a family or employer as a sponsor.
…David Donahue, deputy assistant secretary of state for visa services, said the glitch discovered earlier this month prompted the computer program to unfairly select people who submitted applications in the first two days of the 30-day application process that ended Nov. 3.
“These results are not valid because they did not represent a fair, random selection of the entrants as required by U.S. law,” Donahue said in a video statement posted on the State Department Web site.
It’s a “devastating blow,” the U.K. Daily Mail reports.
Sorry, but the only tears worth shedding are over the fact that we still have this ridiculous program in place nearly 10 years after the 9/11 attacks. For all their talk of “never forgetting,” homeland security officials remain stuck on 9/10 stupid. Nine years ago, I reported on the State Department’s idiotic Diversity Visa Lottery program and called for it to be abolished in Invasion. Why, I asked, are we leaving homeland security to random chance in the wake of September 11? You can read all about the program on the State Department website here. The GAO has raised lingering questions over lax vetting of Diversity Visa lottery winners, including those from terror-sponsoring countries.
Here’s a refresher course on the Kennedy-Bush I roots of the program:
Deadly diversity, dumb program
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
July 20, 2002
In the drawer of dumb, post-September 11 immigration ideas, the State Department’s Diversity Visa Lottery program sits near the top of the heap. What could be more out of touch with the national security goals of the War on Terror than giving away visas randomly to thousands of people from the Middle East to fulfill a politically correct social agenda?
Nearly 55,000 lucky lottery applicants and their family members qualify for permanent residency visas (green cards) every year, which put them on the path to American citizenship ahead of millions of other foreigners patiently waiting to come to this country. The visa lottery was championed by Sen. Ted Kennedy and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in 1990 to admit more “underrepresented” immigrant minorities into the U.S. Although originally intended to give a leg up to Irish immigrants, most of the winners are now from non-Western countries-including several terrorist-sponsoring and terrorist-friendly nations.
How many lives have been sacrificed at the altar of diversity through this immigration set-aside program? We now know of at least two casualties. One of those who hit the visa lottery jackpot was Hala Hadayet, wife of Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohamed Hadayet-the gunman who killed two people at Los Angeles International Airport on July 4th. Hadayet should have been deported from this country six years ago. After entering the country legally in 1992 on a six-month visa, he overstayed illegally and then filed a petition for permanent residency. An INS spokesman told the Orange County Register over the weekend that the reasons for Hadayet’s rejection were “unclear.” The agency initiated deportation proceedings, but as in hundreds of thousands of cases, nothing every came of it. In the meantime, Hadayet’s wife put in an application for the visa lottery. She won, and so did her family. Both legal immigrants from abroad and illegal aliens currently evading the law inside our country are allowed to apply; winners can bring their spouses and children under 21.
There is no fee to enter the visa lottery. There isn’t even a government form. Applicants simply mail a photo, biographical information, and a signature on a plain sheet of paper and wait for the computer-generated drawing results. Losers can keep applying every year. The only eligibility rules are a clean criminal record (other than violating our borders and overstaying visas, which don’t count as crimes to our cotton-headed immigration authorities), a clean bill of health (easily faked), and a high school diploma/equivalent or two years of work experience (easily faked).
The diversity visa lottery program was a bad idea before September 11 and July 4. At a time when people from around the world continue to seek asylum, claim refugee status, and emigrate to America legally, it is absurd that our government still fells compelled to run a lottery to “ensure diversity” of the immigrant population. It is even more outrageous that the program is open to illegal aliens who continue to flout our laws. The visa lottery is an immigration entitlement program based on the luck of the draw and political whims-rather than on our national interest.
How many more Hesham Hayadets are lurking among us? Among those who drew winning numbers in the most recent visa lottery, whose results were announced by the State Department last month, were 1,551 individuals from Hadayet’s native Egypt; 38 from terrorist hijacker-spawning Saudi Arabia; and 2,259 from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, and Syria-all official state sponsors of terrorism. The next lottery drawing is planned for next fall. Blinded by deadly diversity worship, our government has no plans to bar al Qaeda strongholds from the lottery.
We continue to leave homeland defense to chance.
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NumbersUSA has been a longtime critic of the Diversity Lottery.
The is active legislation gaining signatures in both the US House and US Senate to end the Diversity Visa.
More info here:
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/node/11949
Great article as always MM.
Why don’t the people that lose in the lottery just sneak across the border? Seems to work for everyone else….
Thank you for reminding us that when we refer to the Bush administration, we should think Kennedy-Bush.
No, I don’t miss him yet.
What dummy waits for permission to enter this country anymore?
Just walk right in !
Take our jobs
Steal our elections
Rob our houses
Kill our children
The land of opportunity.
What an incredibly stupid idea!! No surprise that Teddy (WaterBoy) Kennedy had a part in it. 55,000 immigrants allowed in without proper background checks, jumping ahead of folks who have been waiting for years. This program is so non-sensical, it simply HAD to be put togther by one of the regressives. All those great folks from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran. What could possibly go wrong?
I doubt there was a computer glitch. I think someone checked into this program and realized is was completely insane and threatened to go ballistic. Whatever the reason, it better be the end of this madness.
Such programs make perfect sense if your goal is to remove the whiteness from America – as it was when I was still a hardcore leftist activist a few years ago.
Until people start challenging rampant anti-white bigotry in this country, expect this type of thing to continue.
I’m curious, Marsh626, what changed you over from the dark side?
i am surprised the state department doesn’t inform them of the southern border loophole in following the rules. just send out a memo to applicants, go to mexico and sneak in, you might recieve amnesty once obama can figure out how to do it with an executive order.
We don’t have any border security whatsoever. We should announce an Oklahoma-syle Land Rush and just let the whole world come here. Then Obama and Holdren and take whomever they want for their world socialist state, and kill off the rest (those displaying conservative tendencies). A two-fer.
You mean the same Ted Kennedy who was feeding confidential government information to Yuri Andropov and Gorbachev so the Russians could take down President Reagan’s foreign policy? That Kennedy? I guess the statute of limitations is expired on dead traitors though. Too bad.
State Department=Ship of Fools
I have posted this before. If a conservative president is ever elected they should on their first day in office dismiss every ambassador along with every State Department employee and start over from scratch.
Yes, some innocent people will suffer, but it’s the only way to insure we have rooted out all of the left wing loons in the Department of State.
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Michelle Malkin has been way out in front on the broken immigration system for many years. Her excellent book INVASION laid it all out almost a decade ago.
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Mexican Immigration Law protects Mexican Citizens and the Mexican Economy. And our Messiah President and the Mexican President stood before our Congress and called the horribly flawed U.S. Immigration system racist! Our system is the most generous in the world. And it does not protect the U.S.A. anymore. We are being sold out for votes by the democrats and are being sold out for cheap labor by the republicans.
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And Comrade Obama (PBUH) and his Ilk want an open borders amnesty program to further destroy our country.
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You just can’t make this stuff up. If you proposed it and evaluated it properly you would be locked up as insane.
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John Bibb
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GrandMa, I’m curious about Marsh, too. Did he just recently realize the difference between right and wrong?
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HI FLYOVERMAN–#12. Great comment–our State Department has worked against U.S. interests for most of my long lifetime.
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Layoff notices for all! Clean out this nest of vipers. And boot the U.N. out of the U.S.A.–no more money. Convert the NYC building into condos.
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John Bibb
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BINGO!!!
That is exactly it. and fits perfectly with the call for amnesty for our illegal invaders and lack of effective immigration enforcement.
Is it time to cycle through the defects of the State Department again?
Why? It never changes. Efforts to fix it far and few between and are ineffective. It is a headstrong bureaucracy with PC as its foundation and compromise on everything as its main policy.
The Constituion and the American citizen are all that stand in the way of the new world order and global government. The primary purpose of the 1965 immigration law was exactly what drunk Teddy said it wasn’t, flooding our cities with poor, uneducated people and changing the demographics of the country. The amnesties and diversity lottery are part of the same plan, dilute American voters so they can’t save their country.
BOTH parties are complicit.
The primary responsibility of the U.S. government is to protect the territorial integrity and people of this country. They have completely abdicated this responsibility. Both parties have been complicit in this. We are being told it is not possible to control our borders, enforce our laws, and thereby control our destiny as a nation. Hogwash. We are being sold out by corporations intent on importing workers for jobs that can’t be exported with the taxpayers paying the true costs, financial and human. If we act like sheep and don’t stop the inundation across our borders, we will lose our country without a bleat.
Two things caught my eye in the above quote.
First, what exactly is meant by, “people who would otherwise have little chance of legally entering the country”? So ae they saying that those with a criminal background would b able to get one of these Visa’s? What about people with possible ties to terrorism?
Secondly, the part about, “doesn’t require applicants to have a family or employer as a sponsor”. In otherwords; we will grant Visa’s to peopel who will not have anyway to provide for themselves up front. No family to live with. Meaning taxpayer funded housing for them; meanwhile we have homeless Americans. No employer sponsorship. Meaning no job, so they will receive welfare and food stamps as well as medical all on the backs of already cash strapped Americans.
This program has got to go.
Just another example of our borders and immigration ‘control’ being inept. Thank you President Obama for your transparent campaign call for immigration ‘reform.’
How about enforcement you hypocrite?
Just another example of our borders and immigration ‘control’ being inept. Thank you President Obama for your transparent campaign call for immigration ‘reform.’How about enforcement you hypocrite?
The Constitution has already been changed by smenatic sleight of hand, our current President is ineligible, he is not a natural born citizen. Everyone has been repeating the lie that he only needed to be born here. That would only make him a native born citizen, which the founders found to be insufficient. Natural born citizens are those born here to citizen parents. It’s only a matter of time now before we have an anchor baby President with no loyalty to The U.S.
or probably get a job in some federal bureaucracy and instantly become an eternally grateful Democrat voter for life.
Our betters have already decided, we will not be allowed to keep our country.
The Constitution died on Usurpation Day, Jan. 20, 2009.
Not exactly. It’s about removing loyalty to the Constitution and the belief in the existence of natural law.
If the moral relativism animals could remove those things without changing the color of the country at all, they’d be just as happy.
Translated from leftese to English:
Diversity —> bigotry against white heterosexual males
You’re likely not wrong.
I don’t care about the “color” of our country.
My father-in-law, from a Meditteranean country, is as dark as at least ?1/4 to 1/3? of “black” folks; and, he could be included in a “separated at birth” list paired with Bill Cosby!
I care about the culture of our country.
If 90% of our neighbors were “black”, or “oriental”, or whatever, but felt as we do about America, about morality, about how to behave, etc.; we wouldn’t care one bit.
Truesoldier #20
I’ve been asking for some time what the percentages of immigrants are drawing welfare/partaking of benefits/and other programs and for how long? I believe another area of far more concern are those claiming refugee status. They are given goodie bags that would knock your socks off. I’ve sent messages to my elected congresscritters and all I get back is pablum sprinkled responses of how we must do this…we’ve always protected the persecuted, warehoused the downtrodden (my words and all we do is just that – we never ask they do anything to contribute to this country), and we should enjoy the diversity it provides! I’ve almost hurled my monitor across the room reading some of the garbage my elected critters spew out.
Thank you MM for diving into this pond of scum once again.
Believe it or not I doubt that will happen. The reason being is the employment priority system. Here is how the Fed job breakdown goes.
Priority 1 – Disabled vets with a VA rating of 30% or better.
Priority 2 – Disabled vets/widows of vets
Priority 3 – vets
Priority 4 – Fmaily members of active duty personnel
lowest priority- general public
So the best jobs are taken long before they are listed as a job for the general public, unless the job has a major shortage (doctors would be an example of that and you can figure out why)
I work for the Federal governement. I am not a union worker as we do not have to join the union (one of the reasons the Federal Employee union does not have as much pull as other public sector unions). I am a vet with 50% disablitiy, so I was able to get in fairly easy. The base pay is right around or a little less than what my private sector counterparts make, but it is the benefits that push us way over what our private sector counter parts make. The government could save the taxpayers a ton just by reforming our penison to be more like a 401k in which we pay into. It is starting to move in that direction, but it still has a long way to go to be equitable to what the private sector employee has to pay.
My job helps contiribute back into the Army medical system and has paid for many an improvement to our wounded warrirs. Without getting too technical, my job is to bill private insurance comapnies or our patients. Let say a retiree, who has Tri Care for life, goes to work for Boeing and has a Regence health care plan provided by Boeing. We bill Regence for the care the retire receives at the hospital where I work. If the insurance company tells us that the bill was applied to the deductible then that is that. We write it off as such, so it allows for the retirees deductible to be paid off so they can use their private insurnce without having to pay that (which helps out the retiree immensely). The money that we collect goes to pay for medical equipment, treatments, supplies, and even my paycheck. So it acts like a supplemental budget for our Military Treatment Facilities.
Of course Obamacare threatens this program, becuase if it drives insurance carriers out of business there will be no one for us to bill (we dont bill Medicare or Medicaid as the government wont bill itself).
Here’s one resource to help answer the question:
New Study Finds 57% of Immigrant Households with Children Use Welfare
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/april-5-2011/new-study-finds-57-immigrant-households-children-use-welfare.html
Most of them probably already do have an employer as a sponsor, Hamas, or the Taliban.
It is for the same reason ‘why do conservatives still expect the Republican Party to listen to its base of conservatives fo another election cycle?’when they don’t.
You mean to say there are never exceptions that can be made to such a priority system?
Get ‘em here, get ‘em dependent on perpetual government assistance and you hope to have reliable additions to your voter base and create a third world socialist paradice right here in the USA.
Shut down this lottery and build the damn fence. Oh, make that 2 fences, electrified with a mine field between.
I have never seen an exception, but anything is possible (though the probability is pretty low). The way it works is the job is first put out to those within the system first (i.e. all those other than the general public). If no one applies or is qualified for the job then it can go out to the general public. The only exception to that is jobs that have a great need like doctors or jobs with high turn over rate (something like a stock person at the commissarry).
As a matter of fact, we had one lady who the personnel office let slip through the cracks (she was of middle eastern background btw). She worked for about two weeks when they discovered this. They had to let her go because the rules were not followed.
The area you see the biggest problem with employment is the contracts. There are so many “diveristy” mandates involved that it would not surprise me in the least bit if there were some Jihadis or illegals hired to fill a diversity slot for contact work.
There is always the 800-pound gorilla of exceptions: Cronies.
I’d like to know the exact name of the State Dep’t person that allowed the Yemeni-terrorist, recent door banger flying to San Francisco, into this country. I would like to know her/his supervisor’s name. I would like to read of their firing for cause.
Wouldn’t hurt to know who exactly gave him a California ID card either. Could he have used that to vote?
As I was perusing the NumbersUSA site, I encountered a new article by Roy. It appears that over the weekend, famed rocker Carlos Santana jumped onto the bandwagon with the bashing of Arizona and now Georgia (both having laws more aggressively pursuing illegal aliens in their states). Roy does a great job in dissecting Santana’s flawed logic and presumptions.
See:
“Hate Speech against new Georgia law tarnishes Civil Rights ceremony at Braves game“. For those interested, check it out here.
PS. Sorry to venture away from the central topic.
The Pentagon and CIA are infested as well. The Bush admin had horrible problems with leaks and other crap. How do you think The Washington Post and NYT got all those Pulitzers?
So true. The problem is that regardless of which administration is in the WH the beuracrats in the alphabet agency stay the same.
Runs deep does hatred flow for the WASP young Skywalker. Must they believe to the indigenous all things restore.
When will things be decided by content of character and skill set rather than phenotype? Genetic composition is poor criteria for admission. This is a “Noah’s Ark” policy for phony fairness.
Reference Truesoldier Post #30:
I do not doubt the process as you state, I know that to be true.
My question is: Why does the demographics of the federal workforce reflect an over-abundance of minorities?
Walk through the halls of any federal government agency, especially in DC, you will not see a workforce that “looks like America.”
Somehow the deck is stacked against your basic white male American.
One wonders how an over-representation of minorities and women can evolve when the hiring practices are as listed.
On May 16th, 2011 at 1:42 pm, Hulka said:
There is truth in that statement. One of the things that I have noticed is that many of the govt workers are older which may mean that they benefited from older afirmataive action policies. the average age of the worker in my office is 50. I am 38 and the youngest by a longshot. I cannot speak to every fed agency as whether or not affirmative action policies are still in place or not, but in the DoD I have not seen any policies (though it is possible they exist off the books). It may also be that the DoD tends to attract former military as we tend to miss the military structure. Other agencies do not always have that magnetism towards them.
However, I think we are still free to go visit his grave and leave a bit of saliva on it.
True that…good reason to defund and dispose of a bowlful of federal alphabet agencies.
So many immigration experts and advocates in the entertainment field…..one wonders how they find time to actually entertain.
Scrappy. Fixed it for you….
Oh, Truesoldier, it caught my eye when you said: “Let say a retiree, who has Tri Care for life, goes to work for Boeing and has a Regence health care plan provided by Boeing. We bill Regence for the care the retire receives at the hospital where I work. ”
Interesting, I have Tri-Care for life and I work for a major defense contractor. Recently I went to a VA ER (closest and I WAS hurting badly).
When in the ER, I offered my company provided private insurance card for billing, they turned it down, flat. No need, they told me, it is “free.”
The type of care I received in the ER (and nearly a weeks stay as an in-patient), proves the saying that you get what you pay for.
HQ VA OIG contacted and we are now engaged in that process.
A combination of things.
1) I heard and read right-wingers in their own voices – without the leftist filters – for the first time in my life and was shocked by how superior their arguments were.
I stumbled upon their book talks and interviews on C-SPAN, I read their books, blogs and journals, I watched their documentaries, etc.
My entire paradigm came crashing down as I was exposed to criticism and the truth about my own worldview for the first time in my life. It was actually quite a devastating experience.
No wonder the Left wants to censor and silence the Right. Because whenever the two sides debate in a fair forum, the Right almost always wins…
2) My best friend was murdered by illegal immigrants in Northern Vorginia in 2007 simply because he was white and his girlfriend was hispanic.
I researched this topic through Google as a result and somehow came upon an obscure article written in 2005 by Michelle Malkin about the dangers of illegal immigrantion in Northern Virginia.
I was devastated to learn that right-wingers had been shouting in the dark and trying to warn people about the threat of illegal and legal immigration but nobody was listening. Had I and others listened, maybe my friend would still be alive…
I’ve been a huge fan of Michelle ever since and actually have this site as my homepage (if you’re wondering why you get so many hits from my IP, now you know).
3) The widespread, proud and open bigotry on the Left.
I always tried to be as color blind and gender blind as possible. But that wasn’t enough for the Left.
You have to actively support discrimination against and constantly demonize whites, males, Christians and conservatives if you want to earn your “I’m not a sexist racist bigot” credentials…
I’ll have none of that, thanks.
4) I realized leftist, socialist ideology doesn’t work as proven by the collapse of Detroit and the Soviet Union.
Etc.
Bless you, Marsh. So sorry to hear about your best friend.
Glad your eyes were opened.
Can you name the books that made the most impact?
You have no idea how refreshing it was to read your post! There is so much hope out there! We just have to connect with those people who are good, decent folks but are merely uninformed. The truth WILL set us free! Keep messaging, everyone! It can have an impact.
Thanks for sharing your story, Marsh!
I’ve been conservative for a long time; however, after reading the books of Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, I came to a realization of the things I, as an American, have a responsibiity for. These people have, IMO, a clear and unshakable faith in America, free markets, and what liberty really is.