Republican introduces bill to scrap diversity visa lottery

Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas on Friday introduced a legislation  that would scrap the prevailing computerized lottery system and impose penalties on immigrants who have overstayed their visas — and it includes provisions to prevent asylum fraud.

The Abolishing the Lottery and Immigration Enforcement Now (ALIEN) Act seeks to stop mass legal immigration of truckers and the migrant surge at the southern border.

The bill would first look to scrap the controversial Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, known commonly as the visa lottery, which provides visas based on random selection to countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S. Approximately 50,000 are made available, each year.

The legislation also proposes   a fine of up to $1,000 a day and potential jail time for immigrants who came in on temporary visas but overstayed those visas. It would place a five-year bar on legal reentry, a 10-year bar on asylum and a 15-year ban for green card applications. It would also bar permanently anyone who overstayed a visa twice.

The legislation also seeks preventing asylum fraud. Currently, a migrant must show they have “credible fear” of persecution if they are returned home. That can be established based on a number of categories — including race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, a Forbes report said.

The ALIEN Act would remove “membership in a particular social group,” noting that courts have found the phrase to be ambiguous and open-ended.

The bill has eight co-sponsors: Reps. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, Jake Ellzey, R-Texas, Ted Budd, R-N.C., Dan Bishop, R-N.C., Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn., Clay Higgins, R-La., Bill Pose, R-Fla., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.

Fallon pointed out the ongoing crisis at the southern border and said that “the enforcement of our immigration laws is not necessarily the root cause of this crisis – it is the laws themselves.”

“It’s time for substantive change,” he said in a statement. “We need to close loopholes and eliminate drivers of illegal immigration. It starts by building a merit-based immigration system, by strengthening visa overstay penalties, and by eliminating the fraud in our asylum program. This legislation is a crucial first step in the right direction.”