What is the Diversity Visa?

What is the ‘Diversity Visa’?

Basically, the Diversity Visa ‘Lottery’ is a program that provides an opportunity for individuals from countries that do not have many immigrants in the U.S. to apply for a ‘green card’.

Here is clarification on some of the issues associated with the Diversity Visa Program:

1.       Individuals from only certain countries are eligible to apply for a Diversity Visa.  The U.S. Department of State uses a complicated formula to determine which countries have low admission rates to the U.S. over the preceding 5 years.  Thus, the countries on the list change as the formula is applied each year.  Persons from those countries with the fewest numbers are eligible to participate.

 

2.       It really is a ‘Lottery’.  Persons from the listed countries can apply once in a year to participate in the Lottery, and like any lottery, it is a random selection process that is very difficult to win.  In 2015, there were 14.5 million applications for only 50,000 visas, so the odds of being randomly selected is very remote.

 

3.       There is no guarantee that you get a ‘green card’.  If a person is randomly selected, it does not mean that he or she gets a ‘green card’; it only means that the person can then apply for a ‘green card’.  A person must still meet certain education or work experience criteria to get a ‘green card’.  In addition, the person must, like all other ‘green card’ applicants, go through a background check, meet health and financial criteria and be vetted before going for an in-person interview at the U.S. Embassy in their country to see if the person is admissible into the U.S.  If the person passes the interview, he or she will get an ‘immigrant visa’ in his or her passport, but still must be examined at the U.S. border before he or she can be admitted.  Furthermore, if the person does not use the immigrant visa within one year, it is terminated and he or she will not be admitted.

It is important to recognize that the formal name of that program is the ‘Diversity Visa’ program because that explains its purpose.  Here’s why:

A Very Brief History

U.S. Immigration laws up until the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act operated on a system of quotas – allowing only a certain number of immigrants from each country to enter the United States.  This was preserved in the Act, but modified in subsequent amendments to open America’s borders to insure there was a variety of nations represented in the melting pot of America, (hence the ‘diversity’).  In what was then a mere quaint seed of globalization, our leaders recognized the importance of sharing ‘American Ideals’ with the rest of the world.   

As a consequence of the 1990 Act creating the program, anyone from anywhere in the world has a chance to fulfill his or her dream to come to the United States for a chance at a better life.  In return, the United States benefits from the traditional goal of sharing its values and ideals with persons from around the globe – not to mention the contributions that such motivated persons make to American culture, community and economy.

 

What About The Terrorist Attack in New York?

It has been widely reported that the suspect in the terrorist attack in New York arrived in the U.S. from the small country of Uzbekistan on one of these ‘Diversity Visas’ back in 2010.

The perverse and horrific actions of this individual are inexcusable.  And it is fair to inquire whether there was any inherent flaw in the Diversity Visa program that was somehow exposed by this perpetrator.  Given the random and slim odds that any one individual could win the visa lottery makes it an unlikely strategy for anyone intending to come to the U.S. for the purpose of causing harm; the fact that the suspect evidently has lived in the U.S. attempting to run a business while raising a family since 2010 makes the connection even more tenuous, and with no prior criminal background, it would make it difficult to have foreseen during his visa interview years ago that he might one day decide to inflict his terror on innocent people.  The fact that all but two of the persons killed by him were also immigrants from other countries visiting the U.S. makes his crime particularly sad and ironic.

 

HS&D Immigration Group