World News for Students of English

28-07-2020 07:00

Every year, millions of people around the world apply for a rare shot at US green card through the annual diversity visa lottery, in which the US government randomly selects people who can immigrate and become permanent residents in the country.

However, Donald Trump, the US president, banned the insurance of most visas for people abroad for the rest of the year. Trump said that this step was necessary to free up jobs for millions of Americans who were unemployed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The US Congress created the diversity visa program in 1990 to diversify the background of US immigrants. Since then, about 50,000 visas have been issued annually. However, this year 42,000 winners are not able to complete the process before the visa freeze.

Long before the pandemic, Trump tried to eliminate the program, and he said that the US should select immigrants based on their skills only.

Difficult words: diversity (a range of different things), visa (an official document or a stamp in a passport which allows a person to enter a country), diversify (to make something more varied), freeze (to stop a program or a situation from happening for some time).

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