President Donald Trump on Wednesday
endorsed legislation to end a visa programme known as the green card
lottery that has enabled more than 17,000 Kenyans to gain residency in
the US in recent years.
Africans have been leading beneficiaries of the 27-year-old Diversity Immigrant Programme, as the lottery is officially known.
A
total of 22,703 sub-Saharan Africans were among the 52,342 visa lottery
winners in 2014 — the latest year for which State Department statistics
are available. Kenyans accounted for 1,216 of the winning entries that
year.
Mr Trump joined two Republican senators on
Wednesday in unveiling a proposal to establish a “merit-based” US system
that would award visas on the basis of applicants’ job skills.
The
White House said the legislation would eliminate “the outdated
Diversity Visa Lottery System, which serves questionable economic and
humanitarian interests.”
In addition to terminating the
lottery, the legislation would sharply limit other means of obtaining
permanent residency status in the US.
The total number of green cards issued annually would
drop from more than 1 million to about 500,000 under the shift favoured
by Mr Trump.
ALSO READ: Trump hands lifeline to Kenya’s US exports
Senator
Tom Cotton, one of the bill’s two lead sponsors, said on Wednesday that
while some may view the current US immigration policy as a “symbol of
America’s virtue and generosity,” he views it as “a symbol we’re not
committed to working-class Americans, and we need to change that.”
Mr
Trump had argued during the presidential campaign that too many
immigrants are gaining entry to the US and are taking jobs from
citizens.
Sponsors of the bill to overhaul the US visa
system have entitled it the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong
Economy Act (RAISE).
No comments :
Post a Comment