OPINION:
For more than 20 years, the diversity visa, also known as the visa lottery, has faced numerous calls across the federal government for reform and outright elimination.
In Congress, among federal agencies and think tanks, many believe the diversity visa is an unnecessary national security vulnerability that has run its course.
The diversity visa was the brainchild of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who in 1990 inserted this random visa lottery into the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 to solve a uniquely Massachusetts political problem: the many illegal Irish immigrants unable to qualify for legal status.
The solution was a lottery, rigged from the start to favor the Irish as well as random immigrants from supposedly underrepresented countries. This way, the legislation would not appear to favor any one group.
This visa lottery can award up to 55,000 immigrant visas per year to people from countries with traditionally low immigration rates to the U.S. Administered by the State Department, it has morphed into a unique national security threat and a magnet for fraud, adding millions of random people to the U.S. population.
Lottery applicants must meet only the minimum requirements: a high school diploma or equivalent, or two years of work experience. Once selected for an immigrant visa, the winner can bring a spouse and all his or her minor children.
Given these minimal requirements, the visa is so susceptible to fraud that it constitutes an invitation for criminal and terrorist exploitation on an industrial scale.
The program draws from an online pool of applicants with no demonstrable ties to the U.S., no skills, no language requirement, no employer sponsor and no family anchor. This is precisely the population about which the U.S. government has the least verifiable information.
The national security vulnerability is real. It’s a structural feature of a system that awards permanent residency through an online, anonymous lottery drawing from countries with the weakest civil registries. These are countries where fraud and corruption can erase records or create entirely new ones.
This randomness of the diversity visa is antithetical to any rational immigration policy. The lottery winner is random. The family members they sponsor are admitted based on that random selection. The program receives millions of applications per year, offering the ultimate prize in global migration, a U.S. green card, for only a $1 application fee.
No amount of reform can fix a system whose fundamental design invites fraud. The new $1 fee does not deter organized rings from submitting hundreds of thousands of online applications and then selling the approvals to the highest bidders.
The passport requirement is no barrier in countries where passports themselves can be obtained fraudulently.
No other developed nation in the world makes this choice. Canada, Australia, Britain, New Zealand — every peer nation has made a deliberate policy choice to prioritize skills, education and economic contribution.
The United States stands alone in using random chance to decide who gets to live, work and become a citizen.
Millions of foreign applicants now wait in employment-based visa backlogs. These are doctors, engineers, scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs who have been individually vetted by U.S. employers. They have confirmed job offers. They have demonstrated skills.
They wait years, even decades, and their future contributions to the U.S. are measurable. Not so diversity visa holders.
Thus far, the diversity visa program faces three overlapping layers of restrictions. On Dec. 18, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services formally suspended all diversity visa processing. Two days earlier, the presidential proclamation restricted travel from 38 countries, including Iran, Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria, all major diversity visa source countries.
On Jan. 21, the State Department paused all immigrant visa issuances to nationals of approximately 75 countries at high risk of reliance on public benefits, covering virtually every remaining diversity visa source country.
The program is dead in practice but now also must die in law.
President Trump’s suspension was a necessary and overdue response to a clear and present danger, but a suspension is not a permanent solution. The program remains authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act. A future administration could restart and expand the visa lottery with the stroke of a pen.
Congress must act now to eliminate the diversity visa from the Immigration and Nationality Act entirely and, if needed, reallocate the visas to a merit-based system with verifiable credentials, employer sponsors and genuine accountability and security.
The diversity visa has no reason for being. Congress should eliminate this unwanted, unsecure visa category once and for all.
• Emilio T. Gonzalez is a retired U.S. intelligence officer who has served in senior positions in the U.S. Army, on the National Security Council and in the Department of Homeland Security.
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