Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The Diversity Visa Program originated as a green card lottery to help Irish-Americans in the 1980s
Found this background thanks to a tweet from Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur:
Link to tweet
Diversity visa lottery was invented to help the Irish, who fled crisis but arrived too late for Reagan’s 86 amnesty.
WaPo article from August 2:
"The green card lottery was invented to help the Irish, but under Trump, its luck may have just run out"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/05/02/straight-up-pork-barrel-politics-how-the-green-card-lottery-was-invented-to-help-the-irish/
The lottery’s origin dates to the mid-1980s, when the United States had an Irish problem.
Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants were flocking to the United States, fleeing an economic crisis back home. They arrived too late to qualify for amnesty. Few had the family ties or job experience to qualify for green cards. And many of them were undocumented, coming as tourists and overstaying their visas.
Irish American members of Congress came up with a solution.
A green card lottery.
-snip-
“About 150,000 Irish immigrants came to New York as students or tourists over the last six years and stayed on as undocumented aliens,” the New York Times reported in 1988.
In 1986, Rep. Brian J. Donnelly (D-Mass.) proposed an amendment to the Immigration Reform and Control Act that would provide 10,000 visas on a first-come, first-served basis for nationals of countries “adversely affected” by the 1965 changes. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) filed similar legislation in the Senate. Then Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill — yet another Irish American from Massachusetts — ensured that the amendment passed.
The Irish were well prepared. Undocumented Irish immigrants in the U.S. applied en masse, submitting multiple applications, which was allowed at the time.
The Irish government even got involved, “chartering planes and literally depositing the applications in post office boxes on Capitol Hill,” according to Law.
“People still talk about Donnelly-visa parties, held in the United States and in Ireland, where guests spent the early evening filling out hundreds of applications for the host,” the Times reported. “Some applicants were known to have sent as many as 500 forms.”
As a result, the first green card lottery was very green indeed.
“Of a total of 1.5 million pieces of mail received in the lottery, 200,000 of the earliest applications came from Irish citizens, winning 4,161 of the 10,000 visas,” according to the Times.
Donnelly’s NP-5 program was a one-off. But he and others in Congress fought for a permanent version of the green card lottery in the Immigration Act of 1990, cagily couching it as an issue of “diversity.”
“That was the rhetoric they used,” Law said. “They couldn’t call it the ‘White-Europeans-who-don’t-have-job-skills-American-employers-want-and-don’t-have-ties-to-anyone-in-the-United-States-but-want-to-come-anyway’ Lottery.”
-snip-
Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants were flocking to the United States, fleeing an economic crisis back home. They arrived too late to qualify for amnesty. Few had the family ties or job experience to qualify for green cards. And many of them were undocumented, coming as tourists and overstaying their visas.
Irish American members of Congress came up with a solution.
A green card lottery.
-snip-
“About 150,000 Irish immigrants came to New York as students or tourists over the last six years and stayed on as undocumented aliens,” the New York Times reported in 1988.
In 1986, Rep. Brian J. Donnelly (D-Mass.) proposed an amendment to the Immigration Reform and Control Act that would provide 10,000 visas on a first-come, first-served basis for nationals of countries “adversely affected” by the 1965 changes. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) filed similar legislation in the Senate. Then Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill — yet another Irish American from Massachusetts — ensured that the amendment passed.
The Irish were well prepared. Undocumented Irish immigrants in the U.S. applied en masse, submitting multiple applications, which was allowed at the time.
The Irish government even got involved, “chartering planes and literally depositing the applications in post office boxes on Capitol Hill,” according to Law.
“People still talk about Donnelly-visa parties, held in the United States and in Ireland, where guests spent the early evening filling out hundreds of applications for the host,” the Times reported. “Some applicants were known to have sent as many as 500 forms.”
As a result, the first green card lottery was very green indeed.
“Of a total of 1.5 million pieces of mail received in the lottery, 200,000 of the earliest applications came from Irish citizens, winning 4,161 of the 10,000 visas,” according to the Times.
Donnelly’s NP-5 program was a one-off. But he and others in Congress fought for a permanent version of the green card lottery in the Immigration Act of 1990, cagily couching it as an issue of “diversity.”
“That was the rhetoric they used,” Law said. “They couldn’t call it the ‘White-Europeans-who-don’t-have-job-skills-American-employers-want-and-don’t-have-ties-to-anyone-in-the-United-States-but-want-to-come-anyway’ Lottery.”
-snip-
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
