Sen. David Perdue: Iran is the No. 3 country in the Diversity Visa Lottery program
Neil W. McCabe
|
President Donald J. Trump’s strongest supporter in the Senate told Fox News hostess Laura Ingraham Wednesday that he supports up-ending the Diversity Visa Lottery, as well as, other permissive immigration programs.
“Let’s talk about this Diversity Visa Lottery,” said Sen. David A. Perdue Jr. (R.-Ga.). “This is a big fraud–it is fraught with fraud itself. It has social security fraud. It has identity fraud.”
Perdue, who sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in last Congress and now sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he is very concerned about the DVL program’s weakening our national security.
“Thirty percent of the visas given out under this system go to countries that have been identified by ICE as harboring and promoting terrorism,” he said. “In fact, the third largest recipient country for these visas is Iran. This is an insidious program. It needs to go away tonight.”
There are lessons we can learn from other countries, the senator said.
“Most countries have already moved to protect their borders, their national security, and to provide for their economic growth and they do that within the immigration system,” he said.
“Canada and Australia did this decades ago: They went to a merit-based system where they bring the right kind of people in today relative to the economy and we don’t,” he said.
Perdue said his legislation that he is sponsoring with Sen. Thomas B. Cotton (R.-Ark.), the RAISE Act, would eliminate the DVL program and return America’s immigration policies to a merit-based program, instead of the family-chain system we now have.
“What we want to do in a merit-based system is eliminate chain migration,” he said. “This is based on the same conclusion that the Democrats came to under Bill Clinton.”
Perdue said President George W. Bush created a commission to look at immigration and when the commission recommended a merit-based system, Clinton again supported it.
The former Reebok CEO said he and Cotton are not pushing for anything that has not worked in the past.
“If you look at our historical immigration, they came in, assimilated into the community, they learned English, they developed the skills, and they contributed to the economy,” he said.
“What we have going today is this politically correct idea that calls for an open border.”
Watch Senator Perdue’s segment with Laura Ingrahm here:
Share: