A plan championed by Vice President Kamala Harris on the presidential campaign trail would import more migrants to American cities and towns through the Diversity Visa Lottery — an immigration program infamous for bringing a convicted Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist to the United States.
Last week, in an exclusive sit-down interview on Fox News Channel’s Special Report, Harris praised the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. As Breitbart News reported, that legislation includes a broad amnesty for most of the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens, and would ensure they are fast-tracked into naturalized American citizenship.
Another key component of the legislation, though, is an expansion of the wildly unpopular Diversity Visa Lottery. In 2018, about 3 in 5 likely voters said they wanted to see the Diversity Visa Lottery ended.
Created by the Immigration Act of 1990, first introduced by then-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush, the Diversity Visa Lottery randomly gives out about 55,000 visas every year to foreign nationals from a multitude of countries, including those facing widespread terrorism such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.
The Harris-backed Citizenship Act of 2021 would increase the number of Diversity Visas rewarded annually through the random lottery system by about 25,000 visas. Such a huge increase would ensure that nearly a million legal immigrants arrive in the United States every decade for no other reason than adding so-called “diversity” to American communities.
As part of the legislation, recipients of the Diversity Visa Lottery would only have to live in the United States for three years on their green cards before they can apply for naturalized American citizenship — cutting the current wait time for naturalization by two years.
Already, the nation’s foreign-born population has hit a record 51.6 million.
In recent years, the Diversity Visa Lottery has become known for bringing into the United States Islamic terrorists who went on to kill Americans and others.
Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov, who came to the U.S. in 2010 through the Diversity Visa Lottery, was sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences plus 260 years in prison for murdering eight people in New York City in October 2017 as part of an ISIS terrorist attack.
The Harris-backed Citizenship Act of 2021 never made its way through Congress. At the time, the Heritage Foundation called it “the most radical piece of immigration legislation ever introduced” in Congress in American history.
“The [Citizenship Act of 2021] would erase the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, includes no border security,” Heritage analysts wrote in early 2021, “would increase both illegal and legal immigration, would skyrocket costs for the American taxpayer, does not advance American interests with regard to immigration policy, and cheapens American citizenship.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
