Ban on Resettling Welfare-Dependent Foreign Nationals to Cut 'Visa Lottery'

President Trump’s plan to stop the importation and permanent resettlement of welfare-dependent foreign nationals in the United States is likely to reduce the inflow of “Diversity Visa Lottery” winners.

The Visa Lottery program—championed by former Sen. Ted Kennedy and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—randomly gives out 50,000 visas every year to foreign nationals from a multitude of countries, including those with known terrorism problems such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.

Winners have undergone only minor screening from immigration officials, even when their ideology is hostile to American laws and culture.

The new Trump plan, designed to protect American taxpayers’ dollars from funding the mass importation of welfare-dependent foreign nationals, is likely to reduce the number of Visa Lottery immigrants arriving in the country every year.

Analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies revealed in 2012 that more than 40 percent of Visa Lottery immigrants said they did not have a job. Less than 25 percent of Visa Lottery immigrants said they had a professional career and about 35 percent said they worked jobs that offer low-skill wages that often have to be supplemented by public benefits and welfare.

Not only would the Visa Lottery be reduced, but the Trump plan would also serve as a boon for American taxpayers. Welfare-dependent immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers about $57.4 billion a year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5 million new, mostly low skilled legal immigrants.

In the last decade, the U.S. has imported more than 10 million foreign nationals and is on track to import the same amount in the coming decade if legal immigration controls are not implemented.

Americans are vastly supportive of ending the Visa Lottery altogether. In a poll from this year, about 60 percent of voters said the Visa Lottery should be eliminated, as Trump has advocated. Roughly two out of three voters say they want legal immigration reduced.