From the NYT op-ed page:

We Need the Diversity Visa Lottery

By MACHMUD MAKHMUDOV NOV. 2, 2017

… President Trump placed blame for the attack on the State Department’s “diversity lottery” visa program, through which Mr. Saipov entered this country, and he called for its end. The lottery has few preconditions, but applicants must come from countries with little immigration to America.

It’s a program promoting Family Disunification.

It would be a shame to eliminate it. The program has allowed my family and countless other immigrants to thrive. …

I had always wanted to be a college baseball player and was thrilled when recruiters from Oberlin College in Ohio came knocking. …

My family’s story wouldn’t be possible without the “diversity lottery” program. President Trump’s call to end it does nothing to strengthen our national security. Uzbekistan’s government has willingly helped us fight terrorism. Furthermore, people who enter the United States through the diversity visa program submit to thorough background checks. Although we now know that Mr. Saipov passed his with no red flags, he was reportedly radicalized while in America, not before, a phenomenon no test could screen for.

Oberlin should give out athletic scholarships via lottery. Maybe they do … Wasn’t Lena Dunham the Oberlin Yeomen’s designated hitter in the mid-2000s?

The diversity visa program should also be preserved because, for many people across the globe, a relative or a neighbor who has managed to immigrate to the United States is their only authentic connection with the country.

In other words, the diversity visa lottery establishes beachheads for chain migration. There are, for example, 32 million people in Uzbekistan. Without the diversity visa lottery only a tiny number would ever have wound up here. But due to it, a lot of people in Uzbekistan now have a second cousin in the U.S. to crash with, so immigrating here is a lot more attractive.

This was certainly true for my family. At a time when groups ranging from state-sponsored media to terrorist organizations denounce the United States as “the Great Satan,” America can’t afford to turn its back on an opportunity to portray itself as an open, tolerant and diverse nation.

As it has been explained to you over and over, we have to let in more potential terrorists because if we don’t, that will make the potential terrorists who are already here even more enraged and homicidal toward us than they already are. Why can’t you people grasp simple logic like that?

Most important, America is obligated to live up to its promise as a shining city on a hill for aspiring immigrants across the world.

Obligated, I tell you!

The country has always served as a place where people were limited only by the bounds of their imaginations or the scope of their dreams. No person has a greater claim to the American dream than any other, and it would be uniquely un-American to systematically exclude the residents of some nations in an immigration system that disproportionately favors those who are related to those already in the United States.

“No person has a greater claim to the American dream than any other:” I couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s right there in the Zeroth Amendment to the Constitution, as carved on the Statue of Liberty.

Machmud Makhmudov is studying political theory at University of Oxford on the Rhodes scholarship.

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