{"id":16601,"date":"2018-03-07T08:30:35","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T13:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=16601"},"modified":"2018-12-28T10:46:28","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T15:46:28","slug":"cato-goes-diversity-lottery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2018\/03\/07\/cato-goes-diversity-lottery\/","title":{"rendered":"Cato Goes All In On Diversity Lottery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under fire for its terrorist links and capricious selections, America\u2019s \u201cDiversity Lottery\u201d (DV program) is getting some lame backup from the open-borders crowd at the Cato Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The libertarian think tank has taken to touting the DV program\u2019s randomly selected recipients of U.S. green cards, asserting that they\u2019re so much better educated than this country\u2019s native-born citizens.<\/p>\n

Amid their spin, the fine minds at Cato aren\u2019t shooting straight.<\/p>\n

Cato\u2019s claim that \u201cnearly half of all diversity immigrants who arrived in 2015 had college degrees\u201d may, or may not, be correct. No government reports on the visa program<\/a> confirm Cato\u2019s finding.<\/p>\n

In the absence of actual data, Cato makes assumptions. It generalizes the demographic profiles of immigrants from sending countries and applies them to winners of the random lottery. Then it uses a 15-year-old study to conclude that educational attainment of diversity migrants has remained consistent even as the lottery list shifted toward Third World nations like Ghana and the Congo.<\/p>\n

The goal of the DV program is to admit more immigrants from “countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States,” according to the U.S. State Department.<\/p>\n

The big winner in the 2016 DV sweepstakes was Nepal, a predominantly Hindu nation with a 66 percent literacy rate. Next was Egypt, followed by Iran, the Congo, Uzbekistan and Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

Even if Cato\u2019s not-so-educated guesses were in the ballpark, they strike out by failing to even mention, let alone address, the diversity lottery\u2019s documented national-security vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

Six known terrorists<\/a> entered the U.S. via the lottery, and 30,000 came from terror-linked nations in the past decade as the Obama administration tweaked diversity quotas in favor of Muslim countries.<\/p>\n

Among the supposedly well-schooled lottery winners was Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov<\/a>, the 29-year-old Uzbek national who mowed down a crowd of bicyclists and pedestrians last Halloween in New York.<\/p>\n

Diversity Lottery: A stupid idea that became dangerous<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe diversity lottery is ideal for terrorists because it encourages immigration from those parts of the world where fraud is common and documents are difficult to verify,\u201d notes the Center for Immigration Studies. \u201cIf one were to set out to design a visa that was ideal for terrorists, the visa lottery system would be it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little wonder that President Trump wants to scrap the diversity lottery altogether.<\/p>\n

Cato\u2019s immigration enthusiasts don\u2019t bother offering ways to reform or tighten the problematic program. Instead, they gullibly wave college sheepskins as the banner of immigrant excellence. Not smart.