The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for immigrants seeking to build a future in the United States. Established in 1990, the program aims to “diversify” immigration to the U.S. by providing opportunities for people from countries with low immigration rates who meet certain criteria, such as education and work experience. Each year, about 11 million people apply, and only 55 thousand people are lucky enough to be randomly selected. Applicants have a 1 percent chance of winning.

While in office, Trump implemented a number of policies that upended the lives of tens of thousands of people who had beaten the odds and won the Diversity Visa lottery. The widely-criticized Muslim Ban is one of those policies, and its effects have been well documented. But Trump also implemented and extended lesser-known policies, known as Presidential Proclamations 10014 and 10052, under the guise of protecting the U.S. labor market after Covid-19 broke out, that dealt a devastating blow to winners of the 2020 and 2021 lottery.

Although President Biden has since revoked Trump’s bans, he has not restarted visa processing for those who were shut out because of it. As a result, tens of thousands of people still remain in limbo. These are the stories of four people who are still waiting for justice.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

When Mohammad Saeed, a 40-year-old Jordanian father of two who has lived most of his life in the United Arab Emirates, won the Diversity Visa lottery in June, 2020, he was in disbelief.

“I went to my wife, I asked her, can you read this? Are you sure I am seeing this correctly? She said ‘yes’ and from that time on everything changed 180 degrees.”

He and his wife quickly started making plans to move close to relatives in New Jersey. They began looking at school ratings and dreaming of a better education and life for their daughters. Mohammad, who works as a project manager in the HVAC field, even landed a few job interviews.

“I need to make a certain future for my kids. You know, the type of the work I do, and the way the yearly salaries work in the U.S., this amount is almost double. And with my experience, I am very suitable for these jobs.”

But President Trump soon extended what was supposed to be a short-term proclamation suspending almost all immigration to the U.S. under the guise of protecting the labor market during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mohammad tried to maintain hope and focus on completing the necessary requirements, so that he and his family could obtain their visas when the ban expired. But despite his best efforts, he couldn’t even secure an appointment for his interview at the U.S. embassy in Abu Dhabi, due to massive delays.

“We had hope at that time that everything could be better. We were pushing ourselves. But when the end of the fiscal year came,” after which diversity visa lottery winners generally lose their chance to obtain a visa, “without any good news or anything honestly at all, I was devastated, really. Because my wife’s relatives in the U.S. were waiting for us. We had the plan, everything.”

It’s now been nearly three years, and Mohammad and his family remain in limbo. Even though President Biden revoked Trump’s proclamations, he has not ensured those whose lives were upended by it can obtain the visas they were promised. Mohammad, who is part of a class action lawsuit, is living in limbo, constantly checking in with his attorney for legal updates and reading the news, for any signs of hope from the White House.

“Before I go to sleep, I check everything. I wake up very early. I go to sleep around 1:30 at night. I wake up around 5:30 in the morning daily to open the news as soon as I can.”

“Honestly, it’s hell. I’m getting old by the minute — not by year. I’m getting very, very tired.”

“My friend was sitting right beside me and I told him I won the lottery. He said, ‘You are the luckiest person in the world.’ And I told him, ‘See, this is my confirmation number here.’ And I’ve never felt this feeling before. This was the best feeling I’ve ever had.”

Maotaz Abdelazim was living in Saudi Arabia and working as an accountant when he won the diversity visa lottery in 2019 for the year 2020. Although he had a stable, satisfying career, he didn’t hesitate to put in his notice and travel to Cairo, Egypt, where he was born, for his visa interview. The opportunity to live in the U.S. was a dream he couldn’t pass up.

“I was dreaming of joining one of the big four auditing firms in the U.S. … and I was deciding whether to live in Houston or Nashville.”

But while 34-year-old Moataz was waiting for his visa interview date, Trump issued his April 2020 proclamation. Unlike winners with earlier lotto numbers, who successfully completed their interviews and received their visas prior to the ban, Maotaz suddenly found himself at an impasse.

“I thought they were luckier than us, that this is not justice. We all won the same year, so why weren’t we treated the same way?”

To this day, Maotaz remains trapped in Cairo, a city he only planned to return to temporarily, unsure of what the future holds.

“I lost my job in the Gulf. If I didn’t win, I would still be there. I would have never submitted my resignation. I was thinking of opening my own project here in Egypt, but I’m thinking of this 5 percent chance of still coming to the U.S. So, what if I invest my money here and I get to go to the U.S.? You just aren’t stable. You are still thinking about going there.”

For years, he’s followed the journey of the people who won the lottery the same years as him and were granted visas before the proclamation through a WhatsApp group chat, where they share photos of their lives in the U.S.

“I would be sending my photos to my family if I were them. But we are still fighting, we are still holding the dream. It feels bad, but I am happy for them.”

If he could speak to President Biden, his message is clear.

“I would like to say to him only one word: Justice. We aren’t going to take over American jobs like Mr. Trump said. We would be Americans. This would be our homeland. Our dream was stolen from us.”

For as long as she can remember, 33-year-old Ekaterina dreamed of leaving Russia and moving to the U.S., where professional journalists and movie critics like her can write freely, without government constraints or fear of reprisal. When she won the diversity visa lottery in 2019 after applying for five years, she was overjoyed.

“I was beyond happy. It was a dream come true. And all my friends and family were all happy too, because they knew how much I wanted to pursue it and move to the U.S.”

Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and President Trump suspended immigration to the U.S., upending her dreams. She tried everything she could to move her visa process forward, in hopes that as soon as normal processing resumed, she’d be ready to move.

“I was doing everything I could to get an interview. My documents were checked and I just needed to get an interview. But the consulate in Russia shut down. The process became almost impossible to finish. Not almost — it was impossible.”

With her dreams on hold, Ekaterina left Russia to attend a series of film festivals in Europe, and then make her way to the U.S. for the New York Film festival. While traveling, she learned that Russia had invaded Ukraine. She knew at that point she could not go back.

“I am actively against the war that Russia started with Ukraine, and I’m actively speaking about it, but I don’t feel safe to return to Russia … In Russia you can sit silently or be ready to be persecuted.”

Ekaterina is temporarily staying in New York City with friends on a tourist visa, but her time in the United States is limited. She will soon have to travel somewhere else to avoid overstaying her visa, and returning to Russia.

“It’s really hard, traveling with a suitcase for a year, not having your own place to live. You don’t know what to expect for the next month. Right now I’m trying to stay in one place as long as I can just to feel calm. I also think every time I talk about myself and how stressed I am, I’m always thinking about the people in Ukraine who are suffering from my country.”

She hopes the next time she returns to New York, she’ll finally be able to plant roots in the city she loves.

“My freedom is my most precious thing. And every time I come to New York, I feel free and I love this feeling. And I really wanted to stay here … I see building something new here. In Russia, anything you build can be vanished the next day.

Ahmad* hoped he’d be in the United States embarking on a new life with his family by 2021, after winning the diversity visa lottery in 2020. But he found himself trapped in Afghanistan after Trump issued and extended a ban on immigration.

Ahmad’s situation went from bad to worse when the Taliban waged an offensive to regain power in August. After seizing a string of cities, the Taliban eventually took control over the capital city of Kabul, before he could make it through the visa interview process.

Ahmad, who once worked as an attorney for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, participated in demonstrations against the Taliban. Now, he lives in fear that he and his family could face retaliation and punishment if his participation is discovered.

“We had really good media coverage. So my biggest fear is that if the videos of my demonstration became accessible to the Taliban regime and its members, that they would automatically start chasing us, and find us.”

He also worries about raising his three children in a country with severe restrictions on fundamental rights.

“Unfortunately, girls and women are not allowed to go to the schools, and I feel that the future is vague. I live in darkness.”

Over the last two years, as he’s struggled to hold onto hope, Ahmad says his hair has turned white, and he’s begun to experience difficulty with his eyesight. Still, he refuses to give up.

“I used to work as an attorney for the government. My only hope is that soon I will arrive in the U.S. and settle there. I’ll be able to start my job doing something to help other human beings. And I hope that I will be able to raise my children in a way that they too can help humanity.”

To president Biden, he says, “Please don’t forget us. Don’t forget us.”

*NOTE: To protect his identity, an alias has been used.

Access to housing is a right that should be equally accessible to everyone in the country — but this is sadly far from reality. Although federal protections have been established to eliminate bias-driven hurdles, many practices still exist today that make it harder for Black people and other people of color, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and many others to access stable housing.

To create a more just society in which everyone’s civil rights are recognized, we must work to end discriminatory housing policies and practices. Test your knowledge and learn more about how the ACLU is advocating to ensure access to housing for all by taking our quiz.

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The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) was enacted in 2008 to protect Americans from being widely discriminated against by a then new technology: genetic testing. The law was written after genetic discrimination emerged in the 1970s. At the time, programs to screen and identify genetic carriers of sickle cell anemia, a disease which afflicts many Black Americans, were being mandated by states. These mandated screening programs targeted Black people, perpetuating racial bias and stigmatization. Congress acted to make this genetic discrimination illegal. But now, GINA is 15 years old and needs to be updated to reflect a new threat of abuse of biological information — epigenetic discrimination. Because the law was written before many modern advances in the field of genetics, it is unclear whether its protections will extend to the novel types of information that will soon be generated from millions of Americans.

GINA was a culmination of more than a decade of work that began long before the entire sequence of the human genome was even known. GINA has enabled people to access their genetic information and undergo a genetic test without fear that the results would lead to higher health insurance premiums or lost work opportunities if that data showed them at risk of developing a disorder. It banned genetic discrimination, but only in the limited contexts of health insurance and employment.

But now it’s 2023, and we’ve learned much more about the human genome. While our DNA sequence (the identity of the A, C, T, G’s that make us who we are) has been made off-limits as a basis for discrimination by GINA, data about the environment around our DNA sequence can be used to infer, sometimes perfectly, the information about the DNA sequence itself. This environment around our genetics describes our epigenetics. Courts have not had an opportunity to address whether GINA’s language would protect against discrimination based on inferences about our genetic information made through analysis of our epigenetic information. We shouldn’t have to wait for discrimination to happen and lawsuits to get filed to ensure we have protection: Congress can and should make clear that there’s no loophole.

Credit: VectorMine/ Shutterstock.com

The Human Genome Project, which aimed to generate the first sequence of the human genome, was launched in October 1990 and largely completed by April 2003 (though 2022 marked the first time the difficult to reach areas of the genome were 100 percent sequenced). At the time of GINA’s passage, there was some suggestion that the environment around DNA could also play a role in the development and manifestation of inherited disease — though the field of epigenetics was nowhere near where it is today. With technological advances in DNA sequencing, advances in machine learning techniques and their novel application to biological data, and scientific discoveries shedding light on epigenetics over the last two decades, there is now previously unimaginable data available from someone’s epigenetics.

Unlike DNA, epigenetics changes throughout a person’s lifetime in response to environmental factors. It can be used to tell information not only about a person’s genetics and ancestry, but also their lifestyle, past behaviors, and experiences. Using a tissue sample like blood or a swab inside the cheek to look at the environment around a person’s DNA, scientists can infer with high accuracy whether a person is or was previously a cigarette smoker, likely past experiences of trauma, an estimate of a person’s age, risk for early mortality, ancestry, and more.

Models that make inferences based on epigenetics and age are already in use — especially when it comes to age and estimated rates of aging (at the molecular level, some people age at different rates than their chronological age in years). In 2016, a life insurance company, employing deceptive commercial promotion of the tech, began using a new epigenetic technology to assess people’s life expectancy. More at-home epigenetic testing companies are beginning to proliferate despite ethical concerns of potential for misuse, especially for the tests being developed for children. Some researchers and biotech startups believe future epigenetic technologies that can reprogram cells to a more youthful state will upend modern medicine, eliminating the need for the treatment of many age-related diseases. If this happens, people who opt out of epigenetic testing and surveillance may find themselves locked out of opportunities or forced to pay higher premiums for insurance or care.

Congress took care to define “genetic information” broadly in GINA’s bill text, but over the years, the courts have been divided over how to interpret this definition, with some narrowing the interpretation and others keeping it broad. This division is now reflected in legislative debates in Congress over the breadth of the term. The ambiguity in GINA when it comes to epigenetic data stems from its definition of a “genetic test,” which it defined as “an analysis of human DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, or metabolites, that detects genotypes, mutations, or chromosomal changes.”

This language was written at a time when genetic tests revealed “chromosomal changes” in the form of whole chromosome deletions or duplications — not the detailed data generated today. Moreover, GINA’s aim can be described as prohibiting employers and health insurers from making a predictive assessment of an individual’s propensity to develop a disease in the absence of symptoms, but not the emergence of a disease or disorder. Epigenetics, however, in reflecting both a person’s nature and nurture, sits somewhere between the two. Nowhere in GINA is the term epigenetics even used, reflecting an oversight that must be remedied. Any ambiguity in the language will be exploited and challenged by companies whose profits depend on discrimination.

Americans have an ever-increasing appetite for gathering information about ourselves. This includes the expanded use of wearables to track sleep and activity, and the more than 26 million Americans willingly sharing their genetic information with companies like 23andMe to learn about unknown relatives, genetic mutations, and ancestry. Companies that offer ways to gather even more data about us continue to multiply. As we saw with the proliferation of at-home genetic testing companies, many consumers will be eager to get as much data as possible. But insurers, advertisers, and employers will be equally eager to get this information. This places increased pressure on Congress to ensure strong privacy protections around this genetic data, forward-thinking and oft-updated regulations in place dictating how such data can be used and by whom, and that companies using this data to discriminate be held accountable.

Amending GINA to deal with these problems will not solve all privacy issues likely to come up as the field of epigenetics continues to develop. A shift towards more knowledge of epigenetic data will require many necessary societal changes, not just in how patients interact with their health and insurance systems, but to what degree genetic and epigenetic data is obtained, stored, protected, and shared, including with law enforcement. Law enforcement access to genetic information is currently determined by states, and the Fourth Amendment and is not a subject of GINA. These concerns are especially relevant given that encryption algorithms developed for genetic information may not be suited for the protection of epigenetic information, and this should also be considered by policymakers.

The future of routine medical treatment and obtaining life and health insurance and employment may all soon touch on epigenetic tests. While Congress acted to ensure that discrimination based on genetic data is illegal, protections around discrimination based on epigenetic data, which can be even more sensitive, are unclear. Congress acted proactively when it passed GINA, and it should do so again by updating and clarifying the language of the law and revisiting it often as technological strides are made.