The Department Of State, Foreigh Operations And Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2008--Continued

Floor Speech

THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE, FOREIGN OPERATIONS AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008--Continued -- (House of Representatives - June 21, 2007)

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Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from South Dakota for yielding and for her leadership in bringing forth this amendment, which corrects a grievous problem with our immigration system.

This visa lottery program is clearly unfair to lawful immigrant applicants who are abiding by our rules and going through the process. It pushes 50,000 people chosen totally at random ahead of hundreds of thousands of law-abiding immigrants waiting to be reunified with their families.

The program is wrought with fraud. The State Department inspector general has said that the visa lottery program is subject to widespread abuse, and that identity fraud is endemic, and fraudulent documents are commonplace.

A simple click on the State Department's visa lottery Web site is very revealing. The first thing you will notice on that Web site is a warning in bold red font about fraudulent websites and individuals. Indeed, a cottage industry has sprung up of individuals using the visa lottery program to take advantage of foreign nationals.

No skills are necessary to enter the lottery. As we look around the country for programs that help meet needs of reunifying families or job skills for which there is a shortage in the United States, we have a program that gives 50,000 visas based on pure luck, and the applicants must only have the equivalent of a high school diploma. But the State Department has indicated they often have very few resources to make even this determination in countries that do not have systems similar to the United States.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is a national security threat. This program of selection purely at random makes it possible for visa lottery participants to be people who are from countries that are known to be state sponsors of terror. Nothing would prevent terrorist organizations from submitting numerous names for the lottery, and, as long as they don't have criminal backgrounds, they can receive not just a temporary visa like the 9/11 hijackers had, but a permanent-resident visa to be permanently in the United States.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

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