Carly Goodman. Dreamland: America’s Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction. The University of North Carolina Press, 2023. 400 pp. Hardcover $30.00.
The United States was built on settler colonialism which favored white Christian immigrants from Europe who employed genocidal tactics to dispossess the native people of their land and resources while forcing the migration of enslaved Africans who were viewed as part-animal labor and part-human for the political representation of their enslavers. When our politicians dehumanize immigrants of color by claiming that they eat their neighbors’ pets, smuggle drugs into the country, or rape women, they play into the racist legacy of the United States. Similarly, when immigrants of color are incarcerated at the border, whipped by border agents on horseback, or simply told not to come here, they are denied the rights that are implied for white Americans and other model immigrants. The history of U.S. immigration policy has largely favored immigrants from Europe by employing national quotas for Europeans and immigration restrictions for the rest of the world’s population. Reforms in 1960s and 1990s immigration legislation, however, worked to reverse these inequities.
Carly Goodman’s Dreamland: America’s Immigration Lottery in the Age of Restriction (2023) recounts the history of the United States Diversity Visa (DV Lottery), popularly known as the “Green Card Lottery,” included in the Immigration Act of 1990. It was originally meant to correct an imbalance of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act which eliminated national quotas favoring people from western Europe. Politicians crafted the lottery program to increase white immigration from underrepresented areas of Europe.(p. 19)1 But Goodman argues that despite its origins in “racist logic,” the lottery program produced substantial benefits to the United States by pursuing and generating a more open and diverse immigration system. While it receives little attention compared to immigration from Latin America, it is an important aspect of the immigration system despite calls to eliminate it.(p. 5)
On October 3, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration Act as Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Lady Bird Johnson, Muriel Humphrey, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and others looked on. Location: Liberty Island, New York. LBJ Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto Restored by: Bammesk, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Divided into three parts, Dreamland chronicles the history of the DV Lottery from its inception in the 1980s when Irish immigrants were grappling with the consequences of being undocumented in the United States through the restrictionist policies of President Donald Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic. Part one of the book discusses the role of the Irish Immigration Reform Movement (IIRM) and politicians like former U.S. House member Brian J. Donnelly of Massachusetts who increased the number of Irish (and European) immigrant visas to the U.S. The Donnelly visa lottery – included in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) – provided 5,000 visas to people from thirty-six countries (mostly European) that were “adversely affected” by the Hart-Cellar Act.(p. 30)
But Rep. Howard Berman of California decried the inherent racism of the Donnelly program and introduced a bill to diversify the lottery. During this legislative debate, lawmakers defined the U.S. as a nation of immigrants and a beacon of freedom, equality, and opportunity.(p. 43) The Berman lottery – included in the Immigration Act of 1990 – allotted 10,000 visas per year to people from 162 “underrepresented countries.”(p. 45)2 Goodman explains that while the lottery was designed to be simple and free to enter without legal assistance, many applicants believed that they could increase their chances by paying for third-party help. This led to the proliferation of businesses designed to take advantage of desperate lottery applicants for a profit without improving the odds of winning.
Part two of Dreamland examines the DV Lottery’s perception in African countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon, where many eager applicants participated to improve their circumstances in an era of Western economic colonialism. Imposed neoliberal economic policies like structural adjustment (such as privatizing state industries, reducing government spending, promoting free-trade policies, etc.) had kept many African nations poor and trapped in cycles of debt to Western nations. Many African nationals, however, viewed traveling abroad as a part of their education and life experience. At the same time, racist immigration policies in Europe perpetuated the idea that the U.S. was a land of freedom and opportunity. So, thousands of Ghanaians viewed the DV Lottery as a chance to migrate to the U.S.(p. 117-19) With a long history of using lotteries for national infrastructure improvements, many Ghanaians entered the lottery.
Due to its high population, Nigeria maxed out its share of African diversity visas in the program’s first year. But many Nigerians associated the lottery with other scams colloquially labeled after the Nigerian criminal code – 419 – which penalized “advanced fee fraud” scams, even though there was no fee to apply for the lottery.(p. 126) Similarly, rumors about national postal systems in the U.S. and Nigeria caused many claimants to question the reliability of postal networks to deliver their applications. Goodman explained that the U.S. was responsible for some of this distrust when in 1998 and 1999, the U.S. Postal Service admitted that it destroyed two million letters from Nigeria due to their suspicion of being “419” scams.(p. 140) But Nigerians still used the DV Lottery to access perceived opportunities in the U.S.
In Cameroon, colonial-era language differences created social disparities between Anglophones and the Francophone majority. The Francophone majority often marginalized Anglophones who saw advantages to traveling abroad to gain an education or work experience. Cameroonians had typically gained these experiences in France or Britain, depending on their colonial legacy. But when European nations began restricting African immigrants in the 1980s, the lottery served to bolster the idea that the U.S. was less racist and more welcoming than Europe.(p. 148-51)3
Goodman writes that while U.S. involvement in African countries often worked as a destabilizing force, U.S. popular culture in Africa shared a narrative that promoted America’s material wealth. By the 1990s, the United States used the lottery as an example of its diversity and willingness to share this wealth. Unrealistic marketing claimed that anyone who worked hard enough could acquire the material possessions, equality, and mobility seen in the media and U.S. pop culture.(p. 178) But this was not often the case for those who won the DV Lottery. The reality was that they, like many immigrants and people of color, lacked access to the types of employment that would produce material wealth or the ability to send money back home to their families.
The book’s final section, part three, explores the lived experiences of Africans who won diversity visas and the lottery’s perception in the United States. Goodman investigated how the reality of life in the U.S. did not always align with their expectations. American critics of the program made racist claims that it encouraged chain migration from Africa. The rising tide of Islamophobia in the post-9/11 era also included anti-black racism and immigrants from Africa were seen as threats to national security. Yet the DV Lottery stayed in place and people from Africa continued to apply with dreams of changing their lives in the United States.(p. 213-16)
Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama tried to update the immigration system but congressional inaction and right-wing opposition stymied comprehensive immigration reform and kept the lottery intact.(p. 242) Goodman explains how Obama played into politics of white grievance by increasing the militarization and covert operations in Africa, and with harsh anti-immigrant policies in the United States. Nonetheless, his presidency encouraged many Africans to still play their odds with the DV Lottery.(p. 227-28)
Even as Republicans controlled Congress, Donald Trump and immigration restrictionists could not pass legislation to eliminate the Diversity Lottery. Instead, his administration took advantage of executive orders during the Covid-19 pandemic to restrict immigration from a growing list of what he called “shithole countries” in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.(p. 264-6) Goodman concludes the book by noting that President Joe Biden continued many of Trump’s immigration policies. Courts eventually ordered the administration to issue diversity visas for 2021, but the process was slowed significantly due to pandemic-era embassy closures.(p. 275)
Goodman skillfully employs a variety of sources, from personal interviews to archival material, to address the core issues related to the immigration lottery. These include sources such as the oral history of Sean Benson, one of many undocumented Irish immigrants who helped create the need for immigration reform and the DV Lottery in the 1980s (p. 13-14) and the news coverage of the 1999 police killing of Amadou Diallo, one of many African immigrants who found that the reality of life in the U.S. was not what they anticipated.(p.199-200) I was particularly impressed with the specific coverage of people and events in Africa. Goodman made significant efforts to include their story and the push and pull factors that helped them decide to play the lottery.
There were times when I felt the book needed to address important issues such as how immigration is used to dispossess native people from their land and the over-policing of blackness in the United States. But each time, Goodman seemed to discuss these complicated legacies in the coming pages. For instance, she discussed how U.S. lawmakers deployed the myth of the United States as an immigrant nation with diverse backgrounds. Goodman clarifies that this framing glosses over its history of inequality and the need for systemic change to white supremacy in the United States.(p. 43) While the Diversity Visa Lottery successfully expanded the American immigration system, Goodman also makes it clear that U.S. policies are rarely benign and have often been administered by both parties with the goal of protecting U.S. political and economic interests above all else.
The arrival hall before Immigration in Terminal 3 Changi, Singapore airport, GSyalindri-WMF, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- The Immigration Act of 1965 (Hart-Cellar Act) eliminated racist quotas based on nationality by focusing on immigrants with family connections and technical skills. The law also imposed new limits on immigration from the Western hemisphere. This had the effect of increasing legal immigration from Asia while setting the stage for increased illegal immigration from Latin America. The Donnelly Visa Lottery was originally designed by politicians who yearned for the days when white Europeans dominated immigration to the U.S.
- “Underrepresented countries” referred to countries that did not use all the visas allotted to them because family members in the U.S. were not petitioning for them to immigrate.
- Goodman writes that Anglophones had traveled abroad for education and work experience that helped them obtain important government and state-owned industry positions when they returned home. Economic conditions and political rivalry made permanent emigration to the US more attractive.