An attempt to abolish the green card lottery is currently before congress. it has the backing of Texans for Immigration reform who quote that a number of lottery winners have later been associated with terrorist and serious crime, and the fact that the whole system is rife with fraud, an industry has built up to fleece unsuspecting applicants with unfounded promises of success and that many of the winners are unskilled and take jobs off Americans. On September 17th a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security and Claims had a new bill (H.R. 775) introduced by Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte that would eliminate the program. The bill was approved by 5 votes to 3 and will go to the full Judiciary Committee for review.
It is unknown whether this bill will move through Congress and it may not be popular in some quarters given that the lottery is one of the few methods for legal immigration for many people and illegal immigration is on the up. The rules for the 2006 lottery were introduced at the end of last month irrespective of this bill. The rules and the ineligible countries are unchanged from last year. As the UK apart from N Ireland is ineligible anyway, whether or not it is eventually abolished will not affect a large proportion of us.
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