Bloomberg
By Allison Schrager
December 9, 2014
The
partisan fight over immigration reform is far from over, but one
casualty is likely to be Green Card lottery, the tiny program that
confers legal immigration status on people from countries
underrepresented in America’s melting pot. The senate’s immigration
bill, currently in legislative limbo, proposes ending it, and analysts
told the Wall Street Journal the Green Card lottery probably won’t
survive regardless of whose bill makes the final rules.
The
arguments against the lottery boil down to a belief that luck alone
does not merit legal immigration status. There are more than 4 million
people waiting for a Green Card, many for decades
and many with families waiting for them in the U.S.. Business leaders
cite a skill shortage among American workers and say they need capable
workers from abroad. Even though the lottery accounted for less than 5
percent of new Green Cards, critics say those
cards should have gone to more demonstrably deserving candidates.
The
problem with that argument is that family ties and job skills aren’t
the only predictors of success. Sometimes you don’t know which
immigrants will really add economic value. Case in point:
the lottery was largely responsible for America’s recent—and
successful—African immigration boom.
In
1990, less than 2 percent of America’s foreign-born population were
African, now nearly 4 percent are. According to the Migration Policy
Institute, 42 percent of African-born adults living
in the United States have a bachelor’s degree, significantly higher
than the 28 percent of native-born Americans and the 27 percent of
foreign-born adults who do. African-born immigrants also have higher
rates of labor force participation. (To be fair, they
also face higher poverty rates.)
Kader
Karamon, now an economist at Freddie Mac in Washington, D.C., won the
Green Card lottery in 2000, when he was 23. At the time, he was living
in Togo, where, he said, limited opportunity
and rampant corruption made him feel like he was “wasting his life.”
Karamon
came to the U.S. with a high school diploma and little English. After
he arrived, he worked a series of menial jobs; in 2002 he enrolled as a
freshman at the University of Pittsburgh.
A few years after graduating, he moved to Paris and completed a Masters
degree. He never doubted he’d return to America. “The US affords more
opportunity to express yourself as a foreigner,” he explained.
For
Karamon and others like him, the Green Card lottery was their only
option. Legal immigration normally requires family or employer
sponsorship, refugee status, or enough money for a student
visa. In 1996, 40 percent of permanent African immigrants came via the
lottery. As the African diaspora population has grown, more Africans
have American relatives who can serve as sponsors. Now only 18 percent
of permanent African immigrants are lottery
winners; more than half have been sponsored by family. But Africans
still make up about half of all lottery-winning immigrants, about 20,000
each year since the mid-1990s.
Despite
the success of the African immigrant population, the lottery has fallen
out of favor. “A lottery is not a way to run an immigration system,”
Cornell immigration professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
told the Journal. “It doesn’t strengthen family ties, promote our
economic interests, or rescue refugees. Congress should abolish the
program.”
That
kind of thinking represents a fundamental shift in American values. The
Green Card lottery most closely resembles immigration policy at the
turn of the last century—where Europeans with
few ties and little education were freely accepted. On paper, Karamon
didn’t seem like good immigration material—no money, no family, no
discernible skills. He may be an exceptional case, but the relative,
recent success of the African immigrant population
suggests it still may be worth taking a chance on a lucky few.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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