The current Diversity Visa Green Card Lottery (GCL) suffers from one major flaw: the only academic qualification it requires from the principal applicant is the equivalent of a high school diploma. Immigrants with only a high school diploma and who don't have the potential for higher academic achievement are unlikely to make a major economic contribution to the United States. Also, they will be competing for the ever diminishing opportunities at that level of education with native born Americans with only a high school education.
We urge the Obama administration to raise the bar for the eligibility for the GCL to a Verifiable Admission to one of the 1000 best universities in the world. Such a list can easily be built using the Shanghai, Times Higher Education and other prominent rankings.