A Member of the United States House of Representatives has tabled a bill aiming to abolish the Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery, a popular program that grants permanent residency to 55,000 immigrants entering the US from third-world countries every year.
Republican Congressman Keith Self filed the measure on Thursday, October 22, 2026, with an aim to terminate the scheme that has been in place for years and offers immigrants from African nations such as Kenya a migration channel.
The draft bill, labeled as H.R. 10896, was sent to the House Judiciary Committee for debate and is yet to be approved by the legislators. Thus, the program will not be eliminated immediately even if the bill is passed in the House.
According to Self, the Diversity Visa Lottery should be terminated because it presents a national security risk.
“I just introduced a bill to finally terminate the Diversity Visa Lottery – a program that hands out 55,000 green cards a year to immigrants from third-world countries and is rife with fraud and lax security measures,” Self wrote in a press release.
The congressman also criticized the court ruling that mandated the Trump administration to reinstate the Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery after it was canceled in December 2025.
“We can’t have ‘activist judges’ dictating presidential policies. Killing the visa lottery would bolster our immigration system and enhance national security,” Self wrote on his official website.
The Diversity Visa Lottery gives the applicants from countries with historically low rates of migration a chance to immigrate to the US.
However, winning the Diversity Visa Lottery does not guarantee that an immigrant will receive a green card. According to the official website, applicants must successfully pass a series of eligibility tests and complete the application process before they can be approved.
Additionally, while Kenyan citizens are some of the many applicants for the Diversity Visa Lottery, the country’s embassy reported a record-high number of applicants for the year 2026. According to the website, there were 3,949 selectees from Kenya, including spouses and children.
Thus, if the bill is approved, Kenyan nationals will be among the 55,000 immigrants who will lose their chance to enter the US through the Diversity Visa Lottery. However, for this to happen, Self’s bill must be approved in the House of Representatives and the Senate and then signed into law by the President.
Currently, the bill is yet to be approved by the House Judiciary Committee, and the fate of the Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery will be decided in the coming weeks.