Affecting Lives: How Winning the US Diversity Visa Lottery Impacts DV Migrants Pre‐ and Post‐Migration
| Author | Onoso Imoagene |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12359 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
Affecting Lives: How Winning the US
Diversity Visa Lottery Impacts DV Migrants
Pre- and Post-Migration
Onoso Imoagene*
ABSTRACT
Usual debates about the diversity visa (DV) programme revolve around the impact of DV initi-
ated mass migration on African countries’development, on whether the programme suffi-
ciently diversifies U.S. immigrant streams, and on whether there is a tradeoff in immigrant
quality for diversity. This article seeks to extend the focus of these debates by examining the
impact of the diversity visa programme on DV migrants at the micro-level pre- and post-
migration. Based on in-depth interviews with sixty-one diversity visa lottery winners from
Ghana and Nigeria, the article examines how this immigration policy has become a contextual
determinant of immigrant incorporation. It argues that an account of the impact of immigration
policies on immigrants pre- and post-migration must be added to theorization of state agency
in shaping migration flows. It concludes with a discussion on ways the diversity visa pro-
gramme can be modified to facilitate incorporation of DV migrants in the United States.
INTRODUCTION
The US diversity visa lottery (DV) programme has become a key migration channel for African
migrants to the United States (Lobo, 2006; Thomas, 2011). The African population in the United
States has grown from just 80,000 individuals in 1970, or 0.8 per cent of the total immigrant popu-
lation, to 2.1 million in 2015, or 4.8 per cent of the total immigrant population (Anderson, 2017).
Between 1990 and 2000, diversity visas accounted for 47 per cent of the growth in African migra-
tion to the United States (Lobo, 2006). In the twenty-first century, DV migration accounts for a
third of the increase in African migration to the United States (Thomas, 2011). DV migrants
deserve attention because they provide an opportunity to examine how immigration policies impact
incorporation for immigrants who are not unskilled, poorly educated, and/or undocumented. Addi-
tionally, they are part of the skilled, educated, and professional immigrant categories on which
Favell, Feldblum and Smith (2006, 3) note “there [is] relatively little ‘human level’research.”
Debates on the US diversity visa programme and African migration usually focus on two key
issues:
1. that the diversity visa programme contributes to the loss of human resources and the brain
drain of highly skilled professionals from African countries, which hinders their development
(Ketefe, 2013; Logan and Thomas, 2011; Rotimi, 2005). However, there is evidence of brain
gain from highly skilled migration through improved living standards of immigrants, increased
* University of Pennsylvania
doi: 10.1111/imig.12359
©2017 The Author
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 55 (6) 2017
ISS N 00 20- 7985 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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