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Visa lottery winners feel cheated by Trump’s visa ban

Noha, an Egyptian engineer, and her husband Ahmed, who were chosen to be among the U.S. government
Noha, an Egyptian engineer, and her husband Ahmed, who were chosen to be among the U.S. government's roughly 50,000 visa lottery winners this year, pose for a photograph near their home in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, June 30, 2020. While visas for Noha and her children came in February, Ahmed's has not arrived and now they fear it may never come. President Donald Trump in June halted visas from being issued outside the United States through the end of the year. (Nariman El-Mofty)
By Samy Magdy</p><p> and Julie Watson Associated Press Associated Press

CAIRO – Noha, an Egyptian engineer, should feel lucky after winning a visa lottery that randomly selects people from a pool of more than 14 million applications for about 55,000 green cards that would let them live permanently in the United States.

But the hopes she and her husband had of moving with their two children to New York vanished last week when President Donald Trump extended a ban on many green cards issued outside the United States to the end of the year, including the lottery’s “diversity visas,” which have been issued every year since 1990 to people from underrepresented countries.

This year’s recipients learned of their good fortune about a year ago, but many had not completed the vetting process when American consulates closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now the administration’s latest step to reduce legal immigration has upended their lives, and many find themselves stuck in a worse situation than the one they were trying to escape.

Noha and her children got their visas in February. But her husband, Ahmed, is still waiting,

“All my plans were collapsed in an instant,” said Noha, didn’t want her last name used for fear that speaking publicly could hurt her family’s case. “I felt that all what we have achieved went for nothing.”