On July 4, 2002, an Egyptian national named Hesham Mohamed Hadayet walked into Los Angeles International Airport, approached the ticket counter of El Al, Israel’s national airline, and opened fire, killing two people and injuring four others in an effort to influence U.S. policy in favor of the Palestinian cause. He was in the U.S. on a Diversity Visa.

A decade earlier, he had applied for political asylum in the U.S. after entering the country on a tourist visa. During his hearing with immigration officials, he said he had been arrested in Egypt and accused of being a member of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, a terrorist organization. He told authorities the accusation was false, but admitted on his application to being a member of the Assad Eben Furat Mosque association, an organization whose purpose was to “understand truly and apply Islamic law in the 20th century under any circumstances.” His asylum application was denied, but in 1997, he and his wife were granted green cards.

In 2017, Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek national who was granted permanent residency in 2010, drove a truck at high speed down a bike path along the Hudson River in New York city, running over bicyclists and murdering eight people in an ISIS-affiliated attack.

Both terrorists received green cards for no reason other than their nationality. Every year, through the Diversity Visa Lottery, about 55,000 random people get green cards simply because they live in a country that has sent fewer than 50,000 documented immigrants to the U.S. in the last five years. Entrants aren’t required to have any particular skills, abilities, or education beyond high school. Though the lottery is completely pointless, the Congressional Black Caucus has repeatedly blocked attempts to retire the program on grounds of explicit racial solidarity with the disproportionate number of Africans who benefit from it and has painted anyone who disagrees with their stance as a racist.

Currently, people from all but 18 countries are eligible for the lottery. The State Department divides eligible countries into six regions: North America (only the Bahamas is eligible), Latin America (Mexico, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean), Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, and several remote Pacific Islands), Asia (including the Middle East), Africa (including Indian Ocean islands like Madagascar, Comoros, and Mauritius), and Europe (including several Asian countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union).

It then allocates visas proportionately among the six regions based on the cumulative population of eligible countries. Each country in a region can receive up to 7% of the visas. Applicants are required only to have a high-school degree or two years of “qualifying work experience” to apply. Selection is completely random. After being selected, applicants must undergo a background check and prove they will not become a “public charge” (welfare recipient), to the satisfaction of a consular officer.

The process is highly odious. Applicants, including the destitute with no job lined up, can still receive a green card if they have documentation from a friend or relative in the U.S. who promises to support them financially. Whether these promises are kept has no bearing on immigration status once the visa has been issued. As a general rule, green cards can’t be rescinded if the recipient collects welfare. Essentially, the Diversity Visa Lottery is a program designed to bring random people from every corner of the planet to the U.S. without any consideration of what they can or will contribute to the country. No other nation in the world does this. Why do we?

The Diversity Visa Lottery was passed as part of the bipartisan Immigration Act of 1990. Signed by President Bush the elder, the program was pushed through the legislature by Irish-American congressmen to create a legal immigration pathway for their co-ethnics, since so many had come illegally in previous decades to escape the poverty and political violence of Troubles-era Ireland. This “55,000 free green cards” program was sold on the grounds of “diversity,” a relatively new buzzword at the time. It contained a temporary transition period in which 40,000 additional visas were also awarded, with 40% earmarked explicitly for Irish nationals. However, by the time the transition period ended in 1995, the economic situation in Ireland had improved and few were still interested. This September, when the State Department designated lottery winners for fiscal 2024, only 18 Irish were selected.

Despite its origins, the program now largely benefits Africans and the Muslim world. Between 2013 and 2022, Africa got approximately 40% of the visas, with Muslim-majority countries such as Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt being among the highest-receiving nations. In 2022, the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that the majority of those selected for fiscal 2023 were Muslim based on the demographics of their respective countries. It seems that for fiscal 2024, that trend will persist.

Although the program disproportionately helps Africans and Muslims in a way that would seem to contradict its central diversity claim — about 60% of the world is Asian and only a quarter is Muslim — this isn’t the problem. Although nobody wants to say it, jihadist violence arising from Muslim immigration is always a non-zero risk. But it's one that we accept because of what Muslims, nearly all of whom are not violent, have to offer the country through their skills and expertise — or, in the case of refugees, because of altruism. So potential jihadist terrorism isn’t the primary issue either, even though it's happened twice already. The problem is the pointlessness of it all. The people killed by Hadayet and Saipov didn’t die because of a bad investment in human capital. They died for “diversity.” In other words, they died for nothing.

Of course, the program would be pointless even if it hadn’t killed anyone because it allows people to enter the country without regard for what they might contribute or their ability to assimilate and thrive. Still, one could argue that the numerical limit on Diversity Visas — a maximum of 55,000 each year — is a drop in the bucket compared with the total U.S. population. This is fair, but once recipients receive citizenship, they can sponsor extended family members to immigrate to the U.S., including siblings and their families, adult children, grandchildren, and others. Frequently called “chain migration,” this process can move entire clans to the U.S. In some cultures, it can last generations, as American-born children enter into arranged marriages with spouses from their family’s country of origin. Within a few years, the spouse can then sponsor his or her entire family for a visa, and the process continues. Each new family that arrives through the Diversity Visa program represents a virtually limitless number of future immigrants who can be admitted without regard for their ability to contribute to the country economically or willingness to assimilate.

The pointless nature of the program has made it a target in Congress, but on multiple occasions, efforts to replace or eliminate it have been fought tooth and nail by the Congressional Black Caucus and nonprofits like the NAACP. In 2013, both groups, with now-Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, decried an effort to replace the Diversity Visa Lottery with a merit-based program because they said it would reduce immigration from Africa. Similarly, in 2018, the Congressional Black Caucus lambasted Senate Democrats for agreeing to negotiate with Republicans on a Trump administration plan that would have eliminated the Diversity Visa Lottery in exchange for protections for DREAMers and border security. The caucus characterized the proposal as “pitting black and brown immigrants against each other,” betraying an explicit racial solidarity that, ironically, keeps with the program's origin. However, the lottery’s original intent and current effects are viewed in nearly opposite terms. For example, when Time Magazine referred to the program as “a racist visa lottery,” the author made it clear that she was referring to its Irish past, not its African present.

It was, of course, ridiculous and un-American to create a program explicitly based on a few congressmen’s personal ethnic solidarity with the Irish. That doesn’t make it any less ridiculous for the Congressional Black Caucus to defend it, particularly since most of them come from families who have been in this country for hundreds of years and share nothing apart from skin tone with African Diversity Visa recipients — and in the case of North Africans, not even that. Black Americans have more in common in terms of religion, culture, and DNA with white Southerners than they do with the vast majority of Africans. So even from a lens of ethnic solidarity, the program has been stripped of any real purpose.

It’s been 24 years. End this pointlessness.

- River Page