'Fits the pattern': Former immigration official says Trump could permanently end Green Card program as lottery stops

A former immigration official said it would not be surprising if the Donald Trump administration permanently ends the Green Card program altogether, after it stopped the Green Card lottery citing the bad actor of Brown University shooting, who also killed an MIT professor. Green Card lottery is different from Green Card programs as the lottery was only meant for countries with less immigration to the US.

Ricky Murray, who served as USCIS chief of staff for Refugee and International Operations until November, told Newsweek, the administration is following a pattern of suspending programs based on some incidents. The administration stalled all immigration requests from Afghanistan and several other countries after an Afghan national was found to be the suspect of a recent DC shooting. Now the administration cited the Brown University shooting and the killing of the MIT professor to suspend the Green Card lottery, as the accused, a Portuguese-origin man, became a citizen through the Green Card lottery.




"This fits the pattern we continually see under this administration, where one bad actor’s actions are cast onto everyone using that avenue for their immigration processing. They use this blanket rationale to bar entire groups of immigrants and don’t look at any individualized merit or factors in determining whether to approve or deny cases. The U.S. immigration system had always been set up to weigh individual merit, while this administration is attempting to flip the script and box everyone together and look for one misstep to judge them all," Murray said.

Green Card programs and Green Card lottery

There are five main Green Card categories: Family-based, employment-based, diversity visa (the Green Card lottery that has been suspended), humanitarian Green Card, Special programs like Special Immigrant Visas.

The Green Card lottery was a random selection of up to 55,000 applications to grant them permanent residency in the US.

'One person’s bad actions...': Indian-origin immigration attorney on lottery suspension

Indian-origin immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta condemned the suspension and said the lottery can't be blamed for the killings. "One person’s bad actions should not be used to shut down the entire Diversity Visa program that is mandated by Congress. The Brown University shootings were not as a result of the visa program but based on the motivations of an individual. The President has in the past unfortunately attacked the DV program because it brings people from “shithole” countries to the US. The alleged killer in this case is from Portugal, which hardly qualifies from among the countries that Trump has denigrated. The administration should not be using these unfortunate killings as a pretext to shut down immigration programs it disfavors," Mehta said.

The Green Card lottery suspension does not impact India, Pakistan, China, the UK and similar other countries with a higher immigration rate as they never qualified for this lottery.