Do Terrorists Use Green Card Lottery?

Фото: Depositphotos

President of the United States Donald Trump called on Congress to abolish the annual green card lottery draw (Diversity Visa Program) after it became clear that the suspect in the terrorist attack in New York got into the country precisely because of this program. Uzbek citizen Saifullo Saipov, who drove a man in Manhattan on a 8 truck, arrived in the US in 2010 year, winning a green card.

Edition The Week decided to figure out whether terrorists could use this lottery to get into the country.

What is the Green Card Lottery?

The federal program introduced at the beginning of the 1990-s allows citizens of countries with low immigration to the United States to obtain permanent residency in the States.

Those who wish to apply must have at least a secondary education, but they do not need to have relatives or work in the United States. Winners are randomly selected by the State Department and undergo extensive checks before being issued a green card.

50 thousands of green cards are played annually, while the State Department receives over a million applications.

According to the latest State Department data, more than 40% of all winners come from African countries.

Trump's Opinion

After the attack, the president told reporters at the White House that he "began the process of canceling the program DV-Lottery».

In a series of tweets, Trump accused Democrats and Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of supporting this lottery, promising to replace it with an merit-based immigration system.

Facts

In a review of the US State Statistics Office in 2007, no evidence was found that immigrants who entered the country through a green card drawing lottery posed a threat of terrorism.

In 2011, the Congressional Research Service again checked the program, but found no additional evidence that it helps terrorists get into the country.

Lottery critics often cite as an example the case when Egyptian immigrant Khessam Mohamed Ali Khedaet received a green card after winning the lottery of his wife. In 2002, an 41-year-old man killed two people at Los Angeles International Airport, and the police described the incident as a terrorist attack.

Several other people who won the green cards were convicted of planning attacks or supporting a terrorist organization.

But immigration policy analyst Alex Novrasteh believes that all these cases should be assessed in the context of all terrorist attacks in the United States.

“Hedayet is the only terrorist who killed people and came to the United States through a lottery Green Card. He killed two people, or about 0,07% of all foreign terrorist victims who carried out attacks on US soil from 1975 to Halloween 2017,” Novrashteh explained.

According to him, the lottery is not an effective way to get to the US for terrorists, because the chances of winning it are 200 to 1.

Since visas are randomly distributed, it is difficult to understand how the system can be manipulated by those who intend to get into the United States to carry out terrorist attacks.

In addition, all receiving green cards on the results of the lottery are thoroughly checked. According to police, Saipov was radicalized after moving to the United States.

“It is obvious that he could not have been planning such a simple attack for the past 7 years,” Nowrashteh noted.

Albert Ford, Research Analyst New america, claims that domestic terrorism poses a far greater threat to the US than immigrants entering the country with green cards.

He added that none of the external terrorist organizations could successfully organize and manage an act of terrorism in the United States from September 11 on 2001.

Hack and predictor Aviator

There are very insignificant facts that speak in favor of the fact that terrorists use a lottery on drawing green cards to enter the United States, therefore, most likely, the abolition of this program will not help much in reducing the threat of terrorism in the United States.

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Trump ordered to strengthen the checks of foreigners

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