Unfortunately DV Lottery is still on track for cancellation via House of representatives bill.
As some of you may know that one of the very first people to get behind cancelling the lottery was Bob Goodlatte (House of Rep)
and he has come up again with bill to cancell lottery this time with a 'sneaky way' of eliminating the program.
He added ammendment to Appropriations bill H.R 2764 to stop funding for DV Lottery hence bring the programme to a halt
Since appropriations bills deal with financial spending/budgeting, this is another way of killing the lottery.
The bad news is that this bill has already been passed by House of Representatives and is currently in Senate for their vote. And this very well advance din its stages compared to the Senat Immigfration bill which was still being debated on let alone being voted and sent to House of Rep
Since this is a financial bill with no major immigration issues embedded in it, this bill will go thru quite easily without time wasting debate by Senate
DV2008 should still be fine even though the current effective date in proposed bill is 1st Oct 2007 since this date will likely change during conference committee 'ironing out'
And even if this bill ends up being law without the Lottery elimination, another bill is in House of Rep By Bood Goodlatte
which specifically targets just lottery elimination ( H.R 1430) this is still in infant stage. Based on a similar one introduced by Bob last time which died
last time due to Congress session finising end of 2006, this may get voted and sent to Senate by Sept/Oct 2007.
But realistically DV lottery will suffer the total cutoff of funding as per H.R 2764 and this will hence eliminate lottery or at the very least
the processing fee for lottery will SKYROCKET.
DV2008 should be safe but DV2009 looks very dead for now.
Cheers
Below is Bob Goodlatte reasoning of elimination of lottery
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This month, the House of Representatives passed an amendment, by voice vote, introduced by Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) to stop taxpayer money from funding the Diversity Visa Lottery program. This bipartisan amendment was included as part of H.R. 2764, the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act for FY2008, and would eliminate funding for the visa lottery program, a controversial program through which 50,000 aliens are chosen at random to come and live permanently in the United States.
"The visa lottery system poses a serious national security threat. Under the program, each successful applicant is chosen at random and given the status of permanent resident based on pure luck," Goodlatte said. "Usually, immigrant visas are issued to foreign nationals who have an existing connection with a family member lawfully residing in the United States or with a U.S. employer. These types of relationships help to ensure that immigrants entering the country have a stake in our nation's continued success, and have needed skills to contribute to our nation's economy. However, under the visa lottery program, visas are awarded to immigrants at random without meeting such criteria."
The State Department's Inspector General testified during the 109th Congress that "the Office of Inspector General continues to believe that the Diversity Visa program contains significant risks to national security from hostile intelligence officers, criminals and terrorists attempting to use the program for entry into the U.S. as permanent residents."
An example of the system gone awry, and thereby posing a security threat, is the case of Hesham Mohamed Ali Hedayet, the Egyptian national who killed two and wounded three during a shooting spree at Los Angeles International Airport in July of 2002. Hedayet was a beneficiary of the immigration lottery. He and his family earned permanent resident status after his wife won the federal visa lottery, despite Hedayet's own admission to the INS that he had been accused by the Egyptian government of being a member of a known terrorist organization.
The visa lottery program is also wrought with fraud. A recent report released by the Center for Immigration Studies states that it is commonplace for foreign nationals to apply for the lottery program multiple times using many different aliases and other false personal information. In addition, the visa lottery program has spawned a cottage industry featuring sponsors in the U.S. who falsely promise success to applicants in exchange for large sums of money. Ill-informed foreign nationals are often willing to pay top dollar for the 'guarantee' of lawful permanent resident status in the U.S.
The visa lottery actually discriminates against law-abiding citizens of a number of countries including Mexico, the Philippines, Canada and the United Kingdom who are prohibited from participation in the visa lottery because their countries have sent high numbers of immigrants to the U.S.
The State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act for FY2008 will be referred to a Conference Committee with the U.S. Senate
