Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) has introduced H.R 479 that would end the visa lottery. This is the fourth consecutive Congress that Rep. Posey has introduced the legislation after taking it over for former Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.).
The bill would simply eliminate the visa lottery that awards 55,000 green cards to foreign citizens who have their applications drawn from a random selection administered by the Department of State.
In 2018, nearly 14.7 million entries were submitted for the lottery.
Ending the visa lottery was a recommendation of the last bipartisan Congressional commission on immigration, chaired by the late Barbara Jordan, and is one of NumbersUSA's 5 Great Solutions.
In the previous Congress, the House of Representatives voted on ending the visa lottery in July. H.R. 4760, the Securing America's Future Act, introduced by Rep. Goodlatte, would have ended the lottery, but the bill failed by 20 votes. In 2012, the House did successfully vote to end the lottery as part of a package that would have created additional guest worker visas for high-skilled foreign workers.
For more, see Congress.gov.
