President Donald Trump has suspended the U.S. Diversity Visa (green card lottery) program after a suspect in a recent mass shooting at Brown University and the fatal shooting of a pro-Israel MIT nuclear science professor was found to have obtained permanent residence through the lottery.
The suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national and green card holder, is believed to have killed two students and wounded nine others at Brown University before also fatally shooting the MIT professor in his home. Both shootings were tied to pro-Israel sentiments expressed by professors.
Valente was later found dead by suicide during a manhunt.
US Dept of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, acting at Trump’s direction, announced that now the DV green card lottery will be paused, arguing the suspect should never have been allowed into the country via the program. The Diversity Visa program had offered up to 50,000 visas annually to applicants from underrepresented countries, but critics say it poses security risks and should be ended. This amount of visas – for a country of America’s size – is negligible, and hundreds of times less than the amount of immigrants who entered the US across the border during Biden’s administration, by contrast.
What is striking is how quickly an entire immigration pathway can be shut down because of a single tragic incident involving one person.
This is not an isolated decision. Just last week, the administration halted migration from Afghanistan and several other countries following the killing of two National Guard members. Now, restrictions have expanded even to countries long viewed as stable, developed, and safe.
There is an American saying: “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” That is exactly what is happening. When crimes are committed by U.S. citizens, the response is limited to standard police and court proceedings. When a foreign national commits a crime, the consequences often extend far beyond the individual—resulting in sweeping restrictions against entire countries, ethnic groups, or continents.
Today, in practice, the only relatively direct path to a green card is increasingly becoming the so-called “golden visa,” requiring investments of around $1 million per family member.
Some may see these measures as a victory—less immigration means fewer problems.
But the real facts tell a different story:
- Legal immigrants pay taxes and contribute billions to Social Security, Medicare, and federal and state budgets.
- Many industries already face severe labor shortages, especially in physically demanding jobs traditionally filled by immigrant workers.
- Reduced immigration accelerates population decline and falling birth rates, pushing the U.S. toward a demographic crisis.
- The long-term result is an aging workforce, rising prices, labor shortages, and gradual erosion of the economic system that sustains the country.
Undocumented immigrants alone contribute billions of dollars annually to Social Security, funds they will likely never benefit from. The system depends on an inflow of younger workers—and that foundation is now being weakened.
Our U.S. job market is weakening, and the Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates because many industries rely on jobs that were typically filled by lower-paid immigrants, and now these positions remain unfilled. The farming industry, in particular, is struggling as immigrants leave, and there is no one to take their place. Farmers in Arkansas are declaring bankruptcy in large numbers because they have huge agricultural labor shortages, and some farmers have struggled due to a lack of workers.
Each such decision by this Administration, large or small — against immigrants — with cruelty and without regard for the ecosystem that immigrants live in and the roles they fill, chips away at the structure holding the country together.
Source:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brown-university-mit-shooting-suspect/
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