Dr. Michael Teitelbaum, the former vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, said Thursday that noncitizens who hope to emigrate to America have a better chance of gambling and winning in Las Vegas than having their visa application approved under the diversity visa system.
“Nobody anticipated that there would be 19 million applications each year for the 55,000 diversity visas. So you have a hit rate — it’s worse than Las Vegas — you have a hit rate of well under a quarter percent of those who applied,” Teitelbaum said during a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington.
The State Department reported receiving 19.3 million applications in 2017 for diversity visas — more than double the number they received a decade earlier.
One of the main reasons for the massive inflation of applicants is “chain migration.” Spouses, children, and parents of new citizens are allowed to limitlessly apply for green cards and the average immigrant will refer 3.45 additional people upon arriving in the U.S.
Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia in August proposed the RAISE Act, which would replace the diversity lottery with a merit-based program.
