Will Davis: It’s time to end the Diversity Visa Lottery program

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Manhattan terror attack

Following the terrorist attack in New York City on Halloween, by a radical Muslim that killed eight people, President Donald Trump has been leading the charge to eliminate what is known as a “Diversity Immigrant Visa,” that awards a green card to the winner of a lottery program that seeks to bring in people from “diverse” parts of the world that don’t usually send immigrants to the United States.

 Sayfullo Saipov
Sayfullo Saipov

One recent winner of this award was Sayfullo Saipov, a Uzbekistan national who was one of the lottery winners to obtain a green card in 2010. On Halloween, he murdered eight Americans, and severely injured eleven more. When Saipov awoke in his hospital bed, he showed no remorse, instead requesting an ISIS flag fly over his room.

Aside from the fact the Diversity Visa program is unfair to more qualified immigrants who are currently waiting in line for an opportunity to come to the United States, this program has also become a grave national security issue. ISIS has already promised to infiltrate this program to send their soldiers to our shores, and while the investigation of Tuesday’s tragic shooting has not concluded, it appears that they already have and certainly have plans to do so again.

Following the attack, Trump tweeted out his first call for the programs termination, tweeting, “The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based.”

While one can question the optics of Trump’s tweet so soon after the tragedy, the substance of what the president is saying remains. A program that was created by a bill sponsored by the senior senator from the state of New York, Sen. Chuck Schumer, allowed for the deaths eight New Yorkers on Tuesday. There have been bipartisan calls to eliminate the program in the past, and those calls should escalate after Tuesday’s tragedy.

This is purely a national security issue. It is far past time for our foreign policy establishment to recognize the correlation between high scale immigration from war-torn, Islamic countries, and terrorism.

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Will DavisWilliam Davis is a sophomore at the University of Alabama. There he is involved in various conservative groups and organizations.