Don't make immigrants pay just to enter a visa lottery
The House Judiciary Committee unveiled a budget bill last month containing a provision designed, much like poll taxes, to undermine access to the Diversity Visa Program and disproportionately impact immigrants of color.
Further, the proposed provision weaponizes the program so that our U.S. government can fleece vulnerable people primarily from the Global South — and particularly from Africa.
This is personal for me for multiple reasons. I run an immigration law firm that represents Diversity Visa selectees. Some of my amazing paralegals are themselves former Diversity Visa selectees. On top of that, I am a candidate for Congress in the seat currently held by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a member of this misguided committee.
Issa's committee wants to charge Diversity Visa entrants at least $250 to enter the lottery. If each of the 20 million qualified entries received for the fiscal 2025 program were accompanied by $250, the U.S. could raise $5 billion. While that new revenue might sound great to a teenager working for DOGE, it does not account for those from whom the funds would come: some of the poorest people on earth.
This is wrong.
I once had a client, a single African woman who was selected but did not have the money for the medical exam, much less the Diversity Visa application fee. Her parents did not want her to lose the opportunity, and so they sold the land on which they had planned to build a home just to pay for the medical exam and $330 application so she could attend the immigrant visa interview. It is easy to forget that many people in this world have incomes of $12 per week, which comes to about $600 per year.
The 'get in line' crowd always omits how few and narrow paths there are to immigrate to the U.S., and how relatively expensive those paths already are.
The Diversity Visa program has led to a broader mix of nationalities represented in the U.S. immigrant population, creating a nation better equipped to understand and relate to the diversity of the world. Under the program, the U.S. issues visas specifically for immigrants who are natives of countries and regions from which fewer than 50,000 immigrants came to the U.S. over the previous five years. The program is responsible for the largest percentage of African and Black immigration to the U.S.
The luckiest of the selectees are granted immigrant visas and granted admission to enter the U.S, automatically becoming lawful permanent residents who may live and work in the country indefinitely.
Hopeful immigrants must submit entries each fall; they find out whether they 'won' by checking the State Department's website. Diversity Visa entrants for fiscal 2026 just recently got their results; with just shy of 20 million entrants this year, an entrant for 2026 had less than a 0.025 percent chance to be selected. From there, due to overselection, only about half of those selected are issued visas.
It is in that context that we cannot, ethically or morally, ask the poorest families on earth to spend $250 — nearly half their annual income — just for a negligible chance to be selected in the program. This would essentially constitute mass fraud. Immigration policy should be used as diplomatic tool to show other countries how great and fair good government can be. Instead, House Judiciary Committee Republicans are choosing to use immigration policy as a weapon to inflict harm on our country's credibility and reputation.
The U.S. is better than this. I pray that Americans stand up and say no to these misguided proposals.
Curtis Morrison is a California-based immigration attorney and candidate for Congress in California's 48th Congressional District.
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