Getting a Green-card is impossible

WASHINGTON (By Mike Madden, Arizona Republic) September 24, 2006 — Every year, millions of people around the world apply for permission to move to the United States. For about 50,000 of them, success comes down to sheer luck.

Since 1995, the State Department has run an annual lottery to award roughly 50,000 "green cards" - visas allowing foreigners and their spouses and children to live and work as permanent legal residents.

Most of the 400,000 green cards go to people with family ties to U.S. citizens or jobs here. But the lottery requires only that winners have the equivalent of a high school education, pass a background check before they move, and have enough good fortune for government computers to randomly pick their application from the more than 5.5 million that come in annually.

The goal behind the program is making sure countries that account for most of the immigration into the U.S. don't take all the available green cards through family ties and job networks, said Bruce Morrison, a lobbyist and former Democratic House member from Connecticut. He helped write the law setting up the lottery in 1990, when he ran a subcommittee on immigration.

Natives of countries - such as Mexico, China, the Philippines and India - that sent more than 50,000 immigrants in the past five years can't apply. The government sets regional lottery quotas by continent, and no country in any region can get more than 7 percent of that region's green cards.

But critics say there is no legitimate reason for the lottery to exist, and a State Department audit found potential security problems.

Like Megamillions

"It's like when you play Megamillions," said Aleksandar Prvanovic, a native of Belgrade, Serbia. Prvanovic received a green card through the lottery in late 2005, shortly after moving to the United States on a student visa to get a Ph.D. in geology at Kent State University in Ohio.

"I played a couple of lotteries, but I never won anything. That was the only lottery I won. I tried to play Megamillions when I came here, but I didn't get a single number."

The program is unique in the nation's complex immigration system, which gives out about 400,000 green cards every year, as well as more than 5 million non-immigrant visas for tourists, students and other temporary residents. Immigration reforms Congress was considering this year would have scaled back or eliminated the lottery. But with that legislation stalled, the lottery will continue for at least another year and the State Department is about to accept a new batch of applications starting Oct. 4.

The lottery brings in thousands of people each year from countries such as Ukraine, Ethiopia, Ghana and Bulgaria - places in Africa and Eastern Europe where natives move to the U.S. far less frequently than do people from other nations.

In some countries, the lottery is just about the only way to get a green card. In 2005, 93 percent of the 1,154 immigrant visas given to natives of Togo, on Africa's Atlantic coast, went to lottery winners. Same for 82 percent of Nepal's 2,161 U.S. immigrants that year.

There is no cost to apply, using an online form at www .dvlottery.state.gov. Anyone who submits more than one application in a year has his or her entries disqualified. Hundreds of thousands of applications get tossed every year for that reason. And so many people don't meet the qualifications or don't pass background checks that the State Department picks about 80,000 winning entries in order to give out 50,000 visas.

'Absolutely ludicrous'

Critics say the lottery, which costs nearly $1 million a year since applicants don't pay to enter, serves no national interest.

"It's absolutely ludicrous," said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for Numbers USA, which advocates lower immigration and has lobbied to have the program eliminated. "The whole idea of having a lottery to hand out green cards is ridiculous. It's not like there's any shortage of demand.

"It's the only immigration program we have where we are specifically and purposely bringing in people who have no connection to the United States," she said. "These are the people who have the least to lose by harming us: They don't have family here, they don't have a job connection."

An internal State Department audit in 2003 found potential security risks in the program. Residents of countries designated as sponsors of terrorism can't get most other visas, but there is no such limit for the lottery.

At least one terrorist got to the United States through the program. Egypt native Hesham Mohammed Ali Hedayet, who killed two people at the El Al airline counter at the Los Angeles airport in July 2003, came here when his wife won a green card in the lottery.

Fraud is so prevalent in some countries that most of their applications are disqualified - including, for instance, 85 percent of the winners from Bangladesh in 2002, according to the department's investigators.

Their only shot

Still, the lottery is enormously popular around the world. Dozens of Web sites have sprung up offering to fill out applications for immigrants for a fee of $40 or $50 - so many that the Federal Trade Commission issued an alert to be on the lookout for lottery scams last year.

For winners, it's easy to understand the interest.

"It gives people like me the opportunity to come to the United States and experience the American dream," said Eric Idehen, a Nigeria native who won the lottery in 1998.

Now a U.S. citizen, he works at Wells Fargo Bank in Des Moines, Iowa, managing outreach to minority communities.

Rather than eliminating the lottery, its supporters say Congress could fix its flaws by charging application fees and implementing stricter security checks for winners. Keeping the element of luck is exactly the point.

"The fact that it's a crapshoot, well, life's a crapshoot," said Morrison, who helped establish the program.

"Some of us, our grandparents came here, and we were born into the wealth and wonder and opportunity of America. And somebody else is born into the poverty of the Congo - and that's a lottery."