President Trump on Wednesday asked Congress to terminate the long-running US diversity visa lottery program that applies to people with low level of immigration to the US, after a terror attack this week that killed at least 8 people in the city of New York.
“ I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I’m going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program,” he told a cabinet meeting days after a man from Uzbekistan ploughed his truck into people on a roadside track in the terror attack in New York after the September 11 carnage.
President Trump, who has taken a hardline against immigrants since he took the president in January, called for extreme vetting of those entering the United States and said that he wanted the Lottery program to be terminated.
“We want a merit-based program where people come into our country based on merit. And we want to get rid of chain migration,” he said referring to the fact that through him potentially 23 more people were also able to enter the United States.
“So we want to get rid of chain migration, and we’ve wanted to do that for a long time. And I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time. And we’ll be asking Congress to start working on it immediately.
There are bills already about ending chain migration,” he said.
The Uzbek man identified as Sayfullo Saipov used the lottery system to enter the U.S. in 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
His demand to end the lottery program followed his comments early this that he had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to step up the Extreme Vetting Program at the airport to prevent the would-be terrorists from coming to the United States.
A bill, that cover a broader immigration overhaul drafted by Republicans and Democrats in 2013, calls for eliminating the Visa Lottery program. The bill was never passed. Tuesday’s attack could help President Trump refocus on this bill.
The Visa Lottery Program was implemented by President George H.W Bush in 1990 which allowed the State Department to issue as many as 50,000 visas per year.

Source: APP