Judge Approves Lottery for 10,000 Bonus Visas

A federal judge on Monday upheld a controversial visa lottery program that will award permanent residency over the next two years to 10,000 immigrants, primarily from Canada and Europe, who might otherwise face years of waiting to emigrate to the United States.

Rejecting arguments that the program discriminates against Latin Americans and Asians in favor of more “traditional” immigrants from Northern Europe, U.S. District Judge Irving Hill cleared the way for issuance of the first 5,000 visas before the end of the year.

“There’s no evidence to support that claim, and the argument is simply invalid and will be rejected,” Hill said, upholding a State Department plan to issue the bonus visas to immigrants from 36 countries determined to have been “adversely affected” by past immigration policy.

Reverse Bias Alleged

The visa lottery program was tacked onto the 1986 immigration reform law at the urging of several East Coast congressmen, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), to end what they called “a new and unacceptable pattern of reverse discrimination against traditional immigrants” that evolved when the United States last revamped its immigration laws in the 1960s.

Attempting to end the quota system that limited scores of Third World countries to 100 immigrant visas a year, the United States in 1965 imposed an annual limit of 270,000 people from all nations, with preference to immigrants with family members in the United States and desirable job skills.

For a variety of reasons, the consequence was an upsurge of immigration from Latin America and Asia and a sharp reduction in new emigres from Canada and Europe. That and the new immigration reform law’s promise of amnesty to millions of Latinos now here illegally prompted the call for corresponding benefits for “traditional” immigrants.

Selection of Nations

The 36 countries and territories selected for the bonus visas, to be awarded on a first-come basis from among nearly 1.5 million who applied during a one-week period in January, were those identified as suffering “adverse” consequences from the reforms of 1965. All had suffered a net decline in immigration from levels recorded in the 1950s and early ‘60s.

Immigration lawyers challenging the guidelines complained that they were racially motivated. No black African state was included and Asia’s representation was small, they argued. Argentina was the only Hispanic country in the Western Hemisphere to qualify, and of the first 10,000 slots tentatively identified last month, nearly 83% went to residents of Northern Europe and Canada, they said.

David L. Ross, representing nine plaintiffs denied permanent visas under the lottery program, said the guidelines failed to recognize that Latin American countries were unquestionably adversely affected because the 1965 reforms imposed the first-ever quotas on immigration from within the Western Hemisphere.

“This time, the department has apparently singled out those countries certain congressmen felt were ‘over-represented’ and concocted a program to implement this racist legislation as quickly as possible, so no one would notice,” complained Ross, whose arguments were supported in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Called Fair Allocation

State Department attorneys said the guidelines fairly allocate bonus visas by measuring declines in immigration after the 1965 reforms. Moreover, other provisions of last year’s immigration law clearly benefit immigrants from non-white countries, including Cubans, Haitians and natives of former colonial areas, attorney Thomas W. Hussey said.

“To look at just one section (of the visa lottery program) is to fail to give a proper reading of the entire statute,” Hussey said. “We argued in our brief that (the program) was within the secretary’s authority, that it was consistent with the intent of Congress and that it was entirely reasonable.”

Hill rejected arguments that the State Department improperly failed to solicit public comment before implementing the program guidelines, ruling that the need to speed visa applications before the end of the year was a legitimate reason for waiving input.

Waiting an extra 60 days to gather comment “would have resulted, quite conceivably, in many of those visas going to waste,” Hill said. “I think this rule is valid against all the attacks made against it.”

The judge also declined to delay awarding of the visas pending an appeal of the decision, a request government attorneys vigorously opposed.

“We have now throughout the world 10,000 people . . . whose hearts are filled with hope concerning the possibility of coming to the United States,” Hussey said. “These are the real parties in interest, and it’s their time that we’re compromising at this point.”