The annual green card lottery that has been ongoing for 27 years now, since 1985, is set to be cut with the new immigration reform legislation, reports claim. The lottery system gives permanent residency to 50,000 people from nations that have citizens who do not come to the United States in large numbers.
The House of Representatives have made a number of attacks on the green card lottery system of late, and they are intending to eliminate it entirely over the next few months as the brand new immigration legislation starts to get underway.
The Washington Post says that the aim of the program was to allow more diverse immigrant groups to get US citizenship and is very popular with immigrants due to the fact that it enables people to obtain citizenship without having any strings attached to it. Eight million people applied for citizenship just in 2012 alone. Nations that see over 50,000 of their people immigrate to the United States per annum are not eligible to participate in the lottery.
The lottery is set to be quietly removed by next year as a Senate compromise in the ongoing debate over immigration; with lawmakers claiming that it has turned into a way for scam artists to be able to get US citizenship and no longer serves its original purpose. Others, however, argue that it is one of the very few methods by which Africans can gain citizenship and that it promotes legal immigration.
