US President Donald Trump has endorsed a legislation to end the Green Card lottery.
The 27-year-old Diversity Immigrant Visa Program is popular in Kenya and over 17,000 Kenyans have travelled and become permanent US residents as a result of it.
Trump joined two Republican senators on this week in unveiling a proposal to establish a “merit-based” US system that would award Visas on the basis of applicants' job skills.
The White House said the legislation would eliminate “the outdated Diversity Visa lottery system, which serves questionable economic and humanitarian interests.”
The legislation would also sharply limit other means of obtaining permanent residency status in the US.
Senator Tom Cotton, one of the Bill's two lead sponsors, said that while some may view current US immigration policy as a “symbol of America’s virtue and generosity,” he views it as “a symbol we’re not committed to working-class Americans, and we need to change that.”
Mr Trump had argued during the presidential campaign that too many immigrants were gaining entry into the US and taking away jobs from citizens.
Africans have been leading beneficiaries of the lottery and a total of 22,703 sub-Saharan Africans were among the 52,342 visa lottery winners in 2014 — the latest year for which State Department statistics are available.
Kenyans accounted for 1,216 of the winning entries that year.
Political analysts, however, say the President's proposal has little chance of becoming law as it would need the support of 60 of the 100 US senators, with a sizable share of the chamber's 48 Democrats likely to oppose the legislation.
