Trump Suspends Green Card Lottery System, Here’s Why!

US president Donald Trump seems to be in no mood to encourage any system that helps non-Americans to settle permanently in the country. After ensuring stricter measures in granting Visas to foreigners, Trump has now dropped another bomb by suspending the Green Lottery System with immediate effect.

The decision was taken because a Portuguese national named Claudio Neves Valente, who is suspected in the recent shootings at Brown University College, entered the US in 2017 through the Diversity Visa Program which is commonly referred as the Green Card Lottery. The shooting incident has resulted in the death of two Americans students and an MIT professor besides seriously injuring 9 others.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that in accordance with US President’s direction she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program. She took to X and posted ” At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”

Diversity Visa is lottery program for an immigrant visa which is followed by a permanent resident card. This program came into force in accordance with Immigration Act of 1990. Every year, nearly 50,000 green cards are provided through lottery to people from countries that have scant representation in the United States.

Trump has been opposing this system since a long time and the shooting tragedy has now given him a reason to announce another sweeping change to the immigration policy. Earlier this year, Trump has introduced a blanket ban on travel to US from some select countries after two national gaurd soldiers were shot by an Afghanistan individual.