Visa Lottery Chain Migration Imported 5 Million Foreigners Since 1994, Says Report

The visa lottery has triggered a hidden wave of chain migration, and has delivered almost 5 million foreign nationals to the United States since 1994, says a new analysis.

New research by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals the enormous chain-migration impact of the visa lottery program, where 50,000 visas every year are given to foreign nationals from a multitude of countries. The countries include those with terrorist problems, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.

Foreign nationals from eligible countries can win the visa lottery if they have a high-school degree and two years of work experience. Once they win the green cards to permanently stay in the United States, the migrants can bring in their spouses and minor children. Each arrival can get citizenship in five years, and then begin choosing members of their extended family — including parents, siblings and their children — to also become U.S. residents and citizens, regardless of their character, education, ideology or security risks. This expanding, unscreened immigration system is known as “chain migration,” and it has more than doubled U.S. immigration rates during since the 1980s...