Photo provided by: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Much of the argument for expanded immigration to the United States comes from the positive economic impacts immigration can have. But, as Ann Coulter notes at The Hill, America is in a “buyer’s market” for immigrants and has the opportunity to import the world’s best and brightest, but instead targets “the desperately poor, the culturally deprived, the sick and the needy.” Coulter writes:
We bring in 50,000 lucky lottery winners each year, literally for no reason at all. (Thanks, First President Bush!) To enter, you must be from a specified country, like the Congo, Nepal, Ethiopia or Uzbekistan. You submit your name to the State Department and, if your name is pulled out of a hat, WELCOME TO AMERICA!
This rigorous system for choosing our fellow citizens gave us, for example, Egyptian national Hesham Mohamed Ali Hedayet, who opened fire at the El Al Airlines ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport in 2002, murdering two people. His wife had won the lottery five years after he came here on a tourist visa.
It got us Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbeki who plowed a rented truck into a crowd of bicyclists and pedestrians on Halloween 2017 in New York City, killing eight and injuring many more.
It bestowed upon us Akayed Ullah, the Bangladeshi national who got in as the nephew of a lottery winner. Ullah enriched us by detonating a bomb in New York City’s Port Authority in December 2017.
Speaking of nephews of Bangladeshi lottery winners trying to blow up the Port Authority, no other major country in the world issues a majority of its visas to people based on the fact that they have a relative already living here.
We’re not talking about the spouses and minor children of immigrants we really want. These are adult siblings, nephews and nieces — who have their own adult children, elderly parents and mothers-in-law. Two-thirds of all legal immigrants to the U.S. come in on these “family reunification” visas. (We wouldn’t want our immigrants to be illiterate, poor and lonesome.)
Even the New York Times — despite its decidedly anti-MAGA bent — has described our “family reunification” system as wildly out of step with the rest of the world.
We’re in a buyer’s market but, instead of taking the top draft picks, we aggressively recruit the desperately poor, the culturally deprived, the sick and the needy. All because American elites seem to believe that it’s unfair — even snooty — to try to bring in the best immigrants we can.
Read more here.
