There are no immigrants on work visas. Illegal immigrants, by definition, don't have any visas and legal immigrants, the topic of the discussion, have an immigration visa which grants a lawful permanent resident status upon entering the country.
Diversity visa immigrants are definitely entitled to all the support and benefits. They are also not required to work to keep their status. I have not seen the DV statistics so I would be very happy if somebody corrected me here, but I imagine the unemployment among a bunch of random people who moved to a different country should be pretty high: it should be pretty hard to find a job in a different country without special skills. Often without even basic language skills.
> I imagine the unemployment among a bunch of random people who moved to a different country should be pretty high
They're not random people though. It's a selection of people who have the drive and willingness to uproot and move to another country. I'd expect unemployment to be lower.
Now if you were talking about refugees (an actual random sample of people who don't have a reason for moving), I'd agree.
Well, we can disagree with each other all we want. Without the actual statistics this means nothing. I could not find the statistics for the US, there is one for Canada though http://www.clbc.ca/files/reports/fitting_in/transition_penal... which seems to support my point of view. But as I said, I'd be happy if somebody corrected me with numbers.
The 55,000 STEM visas discussed in the original article are all work visas. They require a job offer and proof that no American is available to take the position.
You are right that the diversity visa holders are eligible for benefits. In practice, however, immigration doesn't happen if people can't find jobs. During the 2007-2009 period, all immigration, including illegal immigration, dropped to zero, and may even have gone into reverse:
The idea that people move to the united states in order to rely on the USA's incredibly shitty welfare system is just laughable.
Finally, this is 55,000 people a year. Do you think an increase in 0.01% of the US population is going to make any appreciable difference to any federal program's budget, even if all of them immediately applied for welfare? You could let in 10 times as many people and it would still be a rounding error.
No, the 55K visas moving from DV to EB are immigration visas. As for immigration dropping to zero in 2007-2009 you're wrong too, over 1 million legal immigrants in the year 2008 same as 2007 and 2009 http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2008/...
Diversity visa immigrants are definitely entitled to all the support and benefits. They are also not required to work to keep their status. I have not seen the DV statistics so I would be very happy if somebody corrected me here, but I imagine the unemployment among a bunch of random people who moved to a different country should be pretty high: it should be pretty hard to find a job in a different country without special skills. Often without even basic language skills.