Trump Blames NYC Attack On Diversity Visa Lottery Program

We must get MUCH tougher,” the president tweeted
Trump Blames NYC Attack On Diversity Visa Lottery Program
“We must get MUCH tougher,” the president tweeted Wednesday.
By Willa Frej, Elise Foley, and Lydia O’Connor

President Donald Trump said Wednesday, one day after a deadly attack struck New York City, that he would push to eliminate the diversity visa lottery program “as soon as possible.”

The suspect in Tuesday’s attack, 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, used the visa lottery program to legally emigrate from Uzbekistan in 2010, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed.
I’m going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program,” Trump said in remarks at the White House. ”‘Diversity lottery’ sounds nice. It’s not nice. It’s not good. It’s not good. It hasn’t been good.”

The president said he would also push to end “chain migration,” a phrase that immigration restrictionists use to describe allowing immigrants to sponsor their family members to join them in the U.S. Trump said Saipov sponsored others to immigrate to the country.

“We want people that are going to help our country,” Trump said. “We want people that are going to keep our country safe. We don’t want lotteries where the wrong people are in the lotteries.”

“And guess what? Who are the suckers that get those people?” he added, seemingly referring to the U.S.

Trump called Saipov an “animal” and said he would consider sending him to Guantanamo Bay, a detention facility where alleged perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks have remained on trial for years.

Restrictionists have for years targeted the lottery, which provides legal pathways for people from countries with historically low immigration rates to the U.S., making it an ideal target for Trump. Established in 1990, the lottery provides only 50,000 visas annually, and applicants are required to have completed at least a high school education or at least two years of work experience. Visas are distributed among nationals from six different regions.
Trump is backing a bill that would end the diversity visa lottery program and cut other forms of family-based routes to come to the country legally, with the explicit goal of halving legal immigration.

Eliminating the lottery was also included on a lengthy list of policy demands that the president sent to Congress last month. Trump laid out the requests after eliminating a program that protects young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and saying he would sign a bill to let them stay in the country only if he was granted other policy concessions.

Trump has called for slashing legal immigration by moving to a “merit-based” system that would allow fewer people to come to the U.S. based on family ties or through the visa lottery. He did so again on Wednesday.