Diversity Visa: almost 10,000 admitted from terrorist nations

The Diversity Visa Lottery is a Teddy Kennedy-hatched plan that was designed to increase the numbers of immigrants admitted from Ireland and other European countries. Each year around 55,000 applications are chosen at random from around the world with minimal qualificatons.

Now, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that nearly 10,000 people have been admitted from terror-sponsoring countries:

The report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office said the State Department's inspector general warned in 2003 that the Diversity Visa Program posed a significant risk to national security and recommended it be closed to people from countries on the U.S. list of state terrorism sponsors.

But four years later, the program remains open to people from those nations and little is known about what becomes of them once they enter the United States, the GAO said.

From 2000 to 2006, the program allowed 3,703 people from Sudan, 3,164 from Iran, 2,763 from Cuba and 162 from Syria to enter the United States and apply for permanent legal resident status, the report said. That totals 9,792 new immigrants...

They haven't found any evidence that terrorists have used the program but, obviously, that doesn't mean that they couldn't have snuck under the radar.

From July 2002:

...this program run by the State Department increases immigration from the seven countries that the State Department has declared "state sponsors of international terrorism:" Iran (768 visas this year), Iraq (71), Syria (62), Libya (61), Cuba (529), North Korea (four) and Sudan (1,297).

It also awards permanent residency to the natives of two countries that are the prime sources of al Qaida -- the network of suspected terrorists: Saudi Arabia (38) and Egypt (1,551). Other participating countries with active Islamist terrorist elements include Algeria (834), Lebanon (62) and Yemen (45)...

Sat, 09/22/2007 - 09:09 · Importance: 1