Lotteries and Immigration

Abstract

States sometimes select immigrants by lottery. In this article, I argue that lottery-based programs that select immigrants are not ideal for neither an unbiased decision-making process, fairness, nor diversity. I consider each argument in turn. First, I examine the argument that lotteries should be implemented because they ‘sanitise’ the immigration selection procedure of bad reasons and biases. Second, I consider the fairness-based justification of lotteries, which claims that lotteries are a fair way of selecting would-be immigrants because it gives them all an equal chance to enter. Third, I consider the argument that an immigration lottery should be adopted as a way of increasing diversity in the immigrant population. I show that none of these arguments succeeds in its own terms. However, I argue that lotteries that are part of a wider immigration regime can sometimes be justified as a second-best policy device. I illustrate my argument by focusing on the case of the Green Card Lottery.