AS the United States (U.S.) reforms its immigration laws and eliminates the green card lottery, Africans could be the big losers owing to the fact that they are the main beneficiaries of the visa programme which was created in 1995.
But around 100,000 people were Wednesday picked from several million hopefuls who applied to get the Green Card, in what could be the last batch of the yearly lottery slated to vanish under the proposed reforms.
The system that will replace it in 2017, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported Wednesday, is merit-based and will also give Africans a chance.
On average, they are more educated than people from other continents. And English-speaking Africans would get a boost because of that language skill, the report claimed.
However, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People said the number of African immigrants would go down even with the merit-based system. “In essence, we’re concerned,” said Hilary Shelton, the NAACP Washington bureau director.
Half of the 50,000 residence permits handed out at random each year are earmarked for Africans. It is a hugely popular programme that has allowed hundreds of thousands of Africans to settle in America since the mid 1990s. But the ambitious reform project under debate now in Washington, which would provide papers for million undocumented immigrants, contains a clause that would do away with the lottery.
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