American Green Card Lottery and Australian immigration policy
My Vietnamese Australian teacher said, “The Green Card Lottery is good and it keeps giving hope to people in poor countries.” I disagree with his opinion. Actually I have applied to the Green Card Lottery twice and I wished that I would win it, but now I think that the U.S. should choose immigrants like Canada and Australia.
The teacher said “My wife is an American. How can I dislike the U.S.?” in another lesson. I am sure that he is not anti-American. However, I believe that he should be more concerned with America’s future if he is married to an American and his children are half-American. I believe he should think about what will happen if the U.S becomes full of unskilled, lower-educated or non-English speaking immigrants through the Green Card Lottery. Why is he only thinking about people in other poor countries?
I do not believe that all unskilled, lower-educated or non-English speaking immigrants ruin developed societies, but it is difficult for them to find a good job or to enjoy their lives and such people tend to be involved in bad things or blame the majority for their own unhappiness.
A white Canadian said that the U.S. needs unskilled workers too. I disagree with her opinion. I imagine that if Japan accepts many immigrants and they would do jobs Japanese people do not want to do or blue collar work, immigrants will give a poor image and it would cause racial discrimination.
The Vietnamese Australian teacher immigrated to Australia when he was three years old. So, his home country is Vietnam and he belongs to the majority there, and he can imagine what would happen if Vietnam starts a Green Card Lottery. But I feel as if he considers himself nothing but a minority in a western country. I belong to a minority in the U.S., but I belong to a majority in Japan. I have points of view from both standpoints. As a minority, I am happy with the American Green Card Lottery, but as a majority, I disagree with it. I do not want the Japanese government to start a Japanese Green Card Lottery. I want the Japanese government to select immigrants like Canada and Australia, not like the U.S.
However, I disagree with the Australian immigration policy too. I think that Australia should be more tolerant of immigration. I traveled in Australia and I saw vast beautiful lands near the coast that have a tiny population even though the climate there is good.
The Vietnamese Australian teacher once asked me what I think of Japanese immigration policy. I answered that it is better for people to immigrate to Australia than to Japan because Australia is a land of immigrants and the population density there is much lower than in Japan. He replied, “No, in Australia refugees are secluded in certain buildings, so it is better for them to go to Europe.” It is an unbelievable answer. Australia is a land of immigrants as is Canada and the U.S., unlike Japan or most European countries which are more homogenous. Why can’t Australia be more open to immigrants, especially black people from Africa?
Answering to your question dear, it’s probably has something to do with not easy to find jobs in Australia or it could be something to do with racism. I’m not talking about everyone, but if you notice, for some time, Australia has the “White Australia policy” until 1970ish. You probably notice too, that many people who migrate to australia, have difficult time to find jobs and even if they can get jobs, it’s so difficult to climb up the corporate ladder (unlike in US where there’s Equal Opportunity Employer).
Kazukino
2009/06/09
I’m not sure the Green Card Lottery does have the effect making the U.S. “full of unskilled, lower-educated or non-English speaking immigrants”. Presumably the U.S. sets a limit on how many Green Cards it gives out through the lottery and that this is balanced against what the government considers a sustainable level of immigration. I’d guess the government has somewhere along the line decided that the propaganda benefit of allowing a few immigrant workers in a year from anywhere in the world outweighs any other worries they might have. Most U.S. immigration is done on the basis of the immigrant’s skills and the economy’s requirements.
dotdash
2009/06/22
Hi dotdash,
My friend wrote me as follows.
“In my opinion, the Green Card Lottery (G.C.L.) is a scam that the rich people in America wants. This is because by allowing foreign poor country folks to go live in America, America is allowing low-wage employment opportunities for these uneducated workers. This means that big companies such as Burger King, or McDonald, or Wallmart could hire these people and pay them a very low wage and they wouldn’t complain. This is extremely bad for the American economy right now and it’s one of the reason why the American economy is collapsing. By having these lower income workers, the average American could not easily find a starting job to earn some tuition thus causing a problem in the quality of American industries. The rich people would have their children go to expensive private schools while the poor people would stay poor and learn from (some) badly taught public schools which, will cause a more visible hierarchy of income. In short, rich people can pay to rig these lotteries because they have the money to pay someone in the government to do it, and also it is dangerous as well. It is dangerous in the sense that some crime organization could use this as a way to import their friends/relatives from another country to America thus increasing crime rate as well. All in all, it is a bad idea as I see it. America really needs to fix what is happening NOW with their country instead of getting more immigrants to degrade their country even further.”
I do not know what the truth is. I would like to research Green Card Lottery.
japaneseview
2009/08/28
If you want to do some research, you could start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa
The numbers don’t seem to be that high. 50,000 visas per year through the lottery compared to about 1,000,000 new immigrants per year in total (and that’s before we even consider how many people leave the U.S. per year).
Since the proportion is so low and the lottery targets people from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S., I’d guess the main purpose is to create goodwill towards America in countries that don’t already have strong ties with it, and to pay lip service to that little poem engraved inside the Statue of Liberty.
America certainly has problems with the gap between rich and poor (as Britain, where I was born, and Japan currently do), but if businesses in America exploit immigrants from poor countries, the blame surely lies with business, not immigrants. Perhaps there should be stricter employment regulations and a better minimum wage to ensure that immigrants aren’t being used to undercut local workers, I don’t know. However, I find the idea that crime organisations are somehow infiltrating the Department of State and rigging the lottery to bring in dangerous criminals ludicrous. Crime families like the Mafia have all kinds of other ways of sneaking people into the country without doing something so complex as messing around with a federal government scheme like this.
Also, I think once someone starts making comments like “getting more immigrants to degrade their country even further” their rhetoric is moving into a very dangerous area. I’m an expatriate living far away from the place I was born and I would hope I don’t “degrade” the country in which I now live. The Green Card Lottery at least requires that its applicants have a high school diploma or a couple of years of work-based training, which is more than millions of native born Americans/British/Japanese etc. have. Who’s “degrading” what in this case?
dotdash
2009/09/05