Just when you thought Senator Ted Kennedy couldn’t possibly have any more phony stunts in his repertoire of liberal parlor tricks, he comes up with a show stopper that you might not have heard of. Because it happened some years ago.
And even if you have heard of it, you might not remember it, because this burned out Massachusetts gasbag has always had a flair for keeping his actions hidden from public view.
Except that this bit of unseemly trickery, which Kennedy let loose on the country in 1990, has now morphed into a calamitous consequence for our nation. Under the guise of diversity, this “chance” to be an American is threatening to undermine what’s left of our so-called immigration policy.
Here’s the whole skinny. It seems that in that year, Kennedy introduced into America the “diversity lottery”, his idea, and motive, being to bring in a substantial number of Irish immigrants, which it did. Problem is, as happens to so many of Kennedy’s quirky ideas, the whole shebang has run amok.
At a time when the we are playing a dangerous game of alien overload, a report in the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, tells us that the United States is now spreading the word in more than 100 countries that we are eager to accept thousands of new immigrants. The “unrepresented” kind is how they put it.
So, here we go, fellow patsies.
This summer the government will randomly pick 55,000 people from around the world and give them visas for permanent residency in the U.S. All they have to do is write their name, date of birth, and address on a blank piece of paper, and mail it to a designated government P.O. box in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
They pay no fee, must have a high school diploma, and can prove that they were born in any country except Mexico, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, India, El Salvador, Britain, South Korea, Canada, Jamaica, Taiwan, and Columbia. These are barred from the visa lottery.
But that leaves 90 or so countries from which we accept immigrants. So we may be stupid, but you can hardly call us stingy.
What about European immigrants? It used to be that U.S. Immigration rules gave preference to Europeans. But that started to go west with the closing of Ellis Island. And in 1965, when the word “diversity” rang a few liberal bells, the rules officially changed and America threw open its doors to anybody who could fly, drive, sail, or walk here.
C’mon in, the largesse is fine.
So how many more “potential” American citizens can we expect to baby-sit in the near term? Well, this may turn out to be a bigger lottery than Powerball.
For example, last year alone the “diversity lottery” drew 6.5 million applications, and the visas are still being processed. The State Department (your friendly government officials at work) held the drawing and sent notices to 110,000 people. If half qualify, that’s about right.
Once the lucky immigrant is picked, he or she, must go through the same screening process as other legal immigrants. They must be free of AIDS and tuberculosis.
They must also sign oaths that they are not communists or terrorists, don’t have a criminal record, and don’t have more than one spouse at the same time. Then, the first 55,000 people to qualify will become U.S. Citizens.
Incidentally, I always thought that the “sign an oath” part of the requirement for citizenship showed a quintessential display of government imbecility. What would they expect the applicant to say, “I can’t sign that, I’m a terrorist.”
That response is nuts, but in character. It reflects the kind of saphead thinking that prompted Senator Ted Kennedy to come up with the diversity lottery in the fist place.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”