By Matt CoverThe visa applications were part of the 2012 Diversity Visa lottery, which seeks to recruit immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. In 2011, the State Department awarded 1,842 Diversity Visas to Iranian immigrants.
The lottery program for Diversity Visas awards prospective immigrants with the chance to obtain a permanent residency visa. The 4,453 prospective Iranian immigrants will still have to pursue their visa applications on their own, according to the State Department’s website.To be eligible, applicants must have at least a high school education or two years of work within the previous five years at a job that requires at least two years of training.
Iran’s intelligence services have been implicated in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States by bombing a restaurant or public place in Washington, D.C.
The only man arrested in that plot, so far, is a naturalized Iranian-American citizen named Manssor Arbabsiar. Another man, believed to be an Iranian agent, is still at large. How either man entered the country is unknown, although Arbabsiar is a naturalized citizen, suggesting he has lived in America for sometime.
Note:
Anyone out there see something wrong with the "Diversity Visa" program? We are at war in nations in which Iran supplies weapons to murder our troops. Does anyone think that ten years after 9/11, America has become an "enabler" to terrorism, rather than a deterrent? And lastly, would someone begin to overhaul our entire IMMIGRATION system, for the sake of America's national interest and security?
