Morrison Visas and this week's legislation.

Manic Moran

I'm reading from http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1415887 that "The House also voted 273-148 to end the diversity visa lottery program that's open to countries that send few immigrations to the United States"

My understanding is that the Morrison visa is part of this diversity lottery, though given the phrase 'few immigrations', Ireland may not count.

Has this rippled the waters at all over on your side of the pond? Or is it a totally separate mechanism?

NTM

homeOwner

First I've heard of it. I'm not sure I get what you mean (I didnt read the whole article) - are you saying they are going to recind visas given out already? The morrison visa was issued in the early 90s (? i think), i dont think they would take them back - but then again you never know.....

From the bit you quoted it would seem that they are going to stop issuing them to people from those countries.

Hobbes

How I read OP is they are going to remove those countries that send few people from the lottery list?

Not sure how the Irish are doing with the lottery recently but I do know that Student visas have nosedived (to the point where US diplomat was on RTE begging for people).

Benedict XVI

Diversity Visas (DV) are Legal Permanent Residency visas i.e. Green Cards.
I think it is issued on the basis that if you come from a ‘poor’ country you will not have the skills to get into the USA based on education, work experience etc therefore here is your chance.
The DV allocations are shared out around the world based on where you were born (A list exists of eligible countries) but I do not know how many are issued to Irish born applicants, I would imagine it is in the 1,000 range at most
Each year there is a DV lottery where people can apply electronically and if you are selected you can go through the process of getting a Green Card. People who are illegal in the states can apply but if selected could have a tough time convincing the authorities that they were not living illegally in the US.
I would imagine that the point of the OP is that if the take up of offered green cards is low from certain nationalities then that country will be taken off the list of eligible countries.
Morrison and Donnelly visas are Diversity Visas with huge quotas and anyone who has a green card from these programs will not be affected and will more than likely have US citizenship at this stage (5 years green card = citizenship eligibility).

Manic Moran

Fair enough. I was unaware that the Morrison programme had finished.

Might explain why I had copped 'diversity visa' as being the same thing, as I had heard of Irish people trying to go for it.

NTM

Gandhi

The Morrison visa program, as far as I know, favoured applications from Ireland.

The more recent diversity visas were "Schumer Visas" and favoured any country that had not sent many immigrants in other manners. Ireland was usually on the list as the number of immigrants coming in from Ireland these days are not even a blip on the radar compared to those coming from Mexico, India etc.

I don't know why they don't go to a more sane, merit based system like Canada or Australia. Most of the security problems, in my opinion, are caused by not enforcing existing legislation. New legislation is not going to help anything.

Victor

Gandhi wrote:

I don't know why they don't go to a more sane, merit based system like Canada or Australia.

Merit systems are primarily for skilled workers, one also needs unskilled workers.