The State Department’s deputy inspector general said yesterday that despite new fraud protections, the diversity visa-lottery program, which issues 55,000 green cards to foreign nationals annually, is a prime opportunity for criminals and enemies of the United States to enter the nation.
“The bottom line is it’s a program that can be taken advantage of by hostile intelligence officers or terrorists,” said Anne W. Patterson, deputy inspector general for the State Department, before the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.
The lottery’s goal is to broaden the nation’s pool of immigrants. Millions of people apply each year, from which about 110,000 names were selected in the 2004 lottery.
Those selected then must apply and go through the visa process. In the end, 50,000 green cards are issued by a general formula and 5,000 are issued for those who qualify through the Nicaragua Adjustment and Central American Relief Act.
With legal immigration topping 1 million people per year, the program accounts for a small fraction. But in the wake of the September 11 attacks, it has been criticized widely as a good way for terrorists to win entry to the United States and, once here, operate with few restrictions.
“This program remains a serious security threat,” said Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, who is sponsoring a bill to end the diversity lottery.
Nationals from some countries — those that already have high rates of immigration to the United States — are barred from taking part in the lottery, including Canada, Mexico, Haiti, Great Britain, Russia, mainland China, India, Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Yet those from nations on the State Department’s list of states that sponsor terrorism, who generally are barred from applying for temporary visas, still are allowed to apply for the permanent visas through the lottery. In the 2004 lottery, 1,183 persons were registered from Sudan, 1,431 from Iran and 64 from Syria.
Also, fraud is widespread, with people filing multiple applications under different names to increase their chances of being selected. If they are selected under one of the false names, they then obtain fraudulent documents to back up their application.
Ms. Patterson said in 2002, 85 percent of winners from Bangladesh were rejected, indicating both a high level of fraud but a heightened awareness at that particular post.
Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the visa lottery is the perfect means of immigration for a terrorist lucky enough to be selected.
Those that win don’t necessarily have any allegiance or ties to the United States, he said, because the lottery relies entirely on luck, rather than on the relationships with a family member or employer that are used in the rest of the legal immigration system.
Also, a green card allows many more privileges than some temporary visas, such as the ability to enter and leave the United States at will.
“If one were to set out to design a visa that was ideal for terrorists, the visa-lottery system would be it,” he said.
But Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat, criticized the witnesses who wanted to shut down the program, saying they want “to topple the Statue of Liberty.”
She said she and the program’s critics agree on one thing — “the immigration policies of the United States are in shambles.” But she said piecemeal bills like Mr. Goodlatte’s only serve to complicate things.
Ms. Jackson-Lee called for a broader immigration overhaul that would include legal status for some immigrants here illegally and would allow for easier unification of families.
One witness at the hearing, Charles Nyaga, a native of Kenya who applied in 1997 for the lottery and won, said he thinks the program does some good.
“I work two jobs. I pay my taxes,” he said. “I believe the majority of the immigrants who are coming here are coming for a better life.”
Still, he said, the program needs reform. He faces deportation because, although his name was selected, he said his application was lost by the defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), so it wasn’t approved within a year and his chance has expired.
The State Department has made some improvements in the program in recent months, Ms. Patterson said. She said the department now takes applications for the lottery online, and she said using digitally scanned fingerprints, a system that will be in place by October, will reduce fraud. She said the processing center in Kentucky, where applications are reviewed, has created an antifraud officer position and is trying to fill it.
Ms. Patterson also said she supports rejecting applications that come from states that sponsor terrorism.
But Jan Ting, a law professor at Temple University who was assistant commissioner of the INS from 1990 to 1993, said the program discriminates against large Asian nations, for example, and it should be scrapped.
“How can it make sense to give out 50,000 immigrant visas each year in a discriminatory lottery, when admissible spouses and minor children of [legal permanent residents] are kept out of the United States, making family reunification impossible?” Mr. Ting said.
Ms. Jackson-Lee pointed to D.C. United soccer player Freddy Adu, whose mother was selected in a visa lottery in the late 1990s from Ghana, as a success story from the program.
But subcommittee Chairman John Hostettler, Indiana Republican, said he didn’t think that outweighed the case of Hesham Mohammed Hedayet, who killed two persons at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport on July 4, 2002. The Egyptian-born man was in the United States because his wife was selected in the diversity lottery.
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