The Visa Lottery: Surrendering Sovereignty to Random Chance

Fact Sheet - Monday, December 1, 2025

Federal Agency Oversight: DOS, USCIS
Dependents: Same

The Basics:

• The Diversity Visa Lottery provides 55,000 immigrant visas (green cards) annually, with winners selected in a random, computer-generated lottery. Nationals of countries with low recent rates of immigration to the United States are eligible to file applications.
• There is a limited registration window each year. Entries must be submitted electronically to the State Department during that window, and each alien is permitted only one entry. If multiple entries are detected, all of the alien’s entries will be disqualified.
• For an alien to be eligible, they must be a national of a country that sent fewer than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the past five years—this is the driver of the “diversity” the lottery supposedly generates. No single country can receive more than seven percent of the available lottery visas in any given year.
• The principal applicant merely needs to show that he or she has:
• A high school education or its equivalent, defined as successful completion of a 12-year course of formal elementary and secondary education; or
• At least two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience to perform.
• More than 22 million applications were filed for the FY 2024 visa lottery. 

The Problem:

• While there can be debate about how best to order our immigration system, there is no doubt that leaving it up to random luck-of-the-draw is suboptimal. This is especially true when permanent residence in the United States is the reward. The visa lottery brings in immigrants with no familial or economic connection to the United States, and thus no real stake in America.
• The visa lottery is a long-time security vulnerability, since the nationals of virtually every country considered a known state sponsor of terrorism are eligible to apply. In 2025, 8,047 nationals of state sponsors of terrorism were selected as lottery winners. 
• Hesham Hedayet, an Egyptian national who killed two in an attack at Los Angeles Airport on July 4th, 2002, received his green card under the visa lottery program.
• Imran Farooq Mandhai, a Pakistani lottery winner, pleaded guilty in August 2002 in the Southern District of Florida to conspiring to bomb electrical power stations and a National Guard Armory as part of a jihad mission in the United States.
• Sayfullo Saipov, a lottery winner from Uzbekistan, was arrested after he allegedly used a truck to run down numerous pedestrians on a bike lane on the west side of Manhattan, killing eight individuals.
• Abdurasaul Hasanovich Juraboev, another lottery winner from Uzbekistan, pleaded guilty to conspiring to support ISIS and, in 2017, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
• Syed Haris Ahmed, a lottery winner from Pakistan, was convicted in 2009 of terrorism-related activities in the United States and abroad.
• In 2003, the State Department’s Deputy Inspector General warned that the visa lottery “contains significant threats to national security as hostile intelligence officers, criminals, and terrorists attempt to use it to enter the United States as permanent residents.”
• Despite the multiple-entry ban, aliens often use aliases and fraudulent documents to successfully submit multiple entries for the visa lottery. 
• The House of Representatives voted to end the program in 2005; the Senate voted to end it as part of a larger amnesty bill in 2013; and the House and Senate separately voted to defund the program as part of the 2007 appropriations process, prior to the provision being removed in an omnibus spending bill. 

LEGISLATIVE RECOMMENDATION: The visa lottery should be eliminated entirely.

ADMINISTRATIVE RECOMMENDATION: The Trump Administration should use 1182(f) to block admissions for winners of the visa lottery due to extensive evidence of fraud and the national security vulnerabilities within the program.