GLOBAL GAME OF CHANCE: THE U.S. DIVERSITY VISA LOTTERY, TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION, AND CULTURAL DIPLOMACY IN AFRICA, 1990-2016 A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Carly Beth Goodman May 2016 Examining Committee Members: Richard H. Immerman, Advisory Chair, Department of History David Farber, University of Kansas Bryant Simon, Department of History Ben Talton, Department of History Aziz Rana, External Member, Cornell University © Copyright 2016 by ii ABSTRACT As part of the Immigration Act of 1990, the United States has held an annual Diversity Visa (DV) lottery, encouraging nationals of countries that historically sent few migrants to the United States to apply for one of 50,000 legal immigrant visas. The DV lottery has reshaped global migration, making possible for the first time significant voluntary immigration from sub-Saharan Africa to the United States, and serving U.S. public diplomacy in the region by sustaining the American Dream. Drawing on a range of archival and published sources and oral interviews conducted in Africa, this dissertation illuminates how immigration and American global power have shaped each other since the end of the Cold War. It traces the history of the lottery from its legislation in Washington to its operation in sub-Saharan Africa, where, transmitted by non-state actors, it shaped African perceptions of the United States. Sparked by the advocacy of undocumented Irish immigrants in the United States in the late 1980s, policymakers created the lottery as an instrument for legal migration outside of family, employment, and refugee admissions categories. Motivated by domestic politics, and aiming to make visas available to white Europeans shut out of the system since 1965’s Hart-Cellar Act, Congress embraced “diversity” to attract immigrants from countries underrepresented in the immigration stream. Once enacted, immigration attorneys and others amplified the program for personal profit, attracting eager applicants both within and outside of U.S. borders. The lottery was the subject of the world’s first internet spam in 1994, and its operation coincided with the global spread of internet cafés, which became, by the early 2000s, key sites of DV lottery participation and migration commercialization in Africa. iii The lottery provided a rare chance at geographic mobility for Africans after the end of the Cold War, making it powerful in the countries examined in this dissertation: Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon. As neoliberal reforms reconfigured many African states’ economies in the 1980s and 1990s, individuals sought increasingly to escape in search of greener pastures. Unlike other contemporary migration policies, the lottery unintentionally created a channel of legal access to the United States for Africans. Local entrepreneurs seized the visa lottery as an opportunity to profit from fellow Africans’ desperation and aspiration to depart. They transformed the abstract policy into a concrete possibility and promoted positive impressions of the United States as a land of “milk and honey,” reshaping African migrations and international relations in the process. iv For Andrew Chess Thomas, my traveling companion v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When I open a history book, I turn immediately to the acknowledgments. I have been known to tear up reading particularly convincing lines of thanks that acknowledge both the sacrifices entailed by writing history and the pleasures of researching and writing with the support of one’s community and fellow travelers. I hope I can strike the right grace notes because I owe many thanks to my family, friends, and colleagues. The Graduate School at Temple University has supported me generously, including through a Presidential Fellowship. I am also thankful for my time in the Graduate School office during a one-year Graduate Externship, and extend thanks to the staff of the office, especially to Zebulon Kendrick and Alice Abner. The College of Liberal Arts awarded me several travel grants to present my work at conferences over the years. Temple University Global Studies made a generous award to support my international research. The Department of History awarded me the Dr. Fred Zimring Prize, the Cook Award, and a Global U.S. Studies grant to present at a conference in Kyoto, Japan. I owe a debt to the department’s administrative team, Patricia Williams, who sadly passed away this year, and Vangeline Campbell. The Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University, my home base within the department, exists due to the tireless efforts of Dr. Richard Immerman. CENFAD provided me with financial support for my research, including awards given in the name of Marvin Wachman, Thomas J. Davis, and John Votaw, as well as a conference travel grant. I also appreciated the collegial dinners spent with guest speakers and department colleagues. The Center for the Humanities at Temple made me an Associate Fellow in 2014-2015, vi and I was grateful for the opportunity to workshop a chapter and plan a very cool conference. Several organizations awarded me funding so that I could present my work at conferences and workshops. The American Society for Legal History made it possible for me to travel to Miami and Denver to attend its annual meetings, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded me the Robert A. and Barbara Divine Graduate Student Travel Grant so that I could attend its annual meeting in Kentucky. I received additional funding so that I could present my project at the Doshisha University American Studies Summer Seminar, and I am grateful for all the feedback on my project, particularly from Brian DeLay, Edward G. Gray, and David L. Leal. Without additional funding for research travel, I could not have completed this dissertation. The John Joseph Moakley Archive and Institute’s Research Travel Grant enabled me to research in the archives of Congressman Joe Moakley in Boston. The Association of Centers for the Study of Congress Richard A. Baker Graduate Student Travel Grant funded research in the papers of Congressman Bruce Morrison in Connecticut. I was grateful to receive funding from the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming so that I could get to the papers of Senator Alan K. Simpson. SHAFR’s Samuel Flagg Bemis Dissertation Research Grant funded, among other things, a fruitful visit to the papers of the Irish Immigration Reform Movement at NYU in New York. The archivists and staff at each of these institutions were beyond helpful and very kind. Most recently, the History Project of the Harvard Center for History and Economics and Institute for New Economic Thinking helped fund my visit to Cameroon, through its Dissertation Research Grant. In 2015, I was named a Diplomacy and Diversity Fellow by vii Humanity in Action, and spent a marvelous month thinking about these issues outside the context of my dissertation in Washington, DC, Paris, and Berlin. I could not have finished the dissertation this year were it not for SHAFR awarding me its generous Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Having time and space to think and write is a tremendous gift. Within my department and outside of it, many fellow graduate students and friends (several of whom have earned their doctorates in the time I have known them) have been generous with their time and ideas. Thank you to Tim Sayle, Dan Royles, Melanie Newport, David Thomas, Manna Duah, Silke Zoller, John Worsencroft, Meredith Hohe, Jess Bird, Dylan Gottlieb, Emily Prifogle, Alison Okuda, Adam Goodman, Amy Hanes, David Bargueño, Katie Hahn, Cillian Nolan, Mason Austin, Galen Born, and Elissa Robbins for the conversations and editing sessions. I am also grateful to historians Carol Gluck, Beth Bailey, Heather Lee, Abby Perkiss, Kate Scott, Jennifer Hart, Carl Bon Tempo, Amy Offner, Audra Wolfe, Christopher Capozzola, Lila Berman, Paul Kramer, Maria Cristina Garcia, and Matt Connelly for their ideas and encouragement. I am grateful to all my friends for listening to talk of the diversity visa lottery. Several friends have hosted me over the years, and I owe them special thanks here as well: Gloria Maier and Steve Dean, Lisa and Matthew Watkins, Maureen Byrnes, Gabor Rona, Johanna and Jesse Littlewood, Shara Kaplin, and Brad Simpson. I am also grateful for fruitful discussions with Sylvie Bello and Patience Lehrman. In Ghana, I am grateful to my hosts Dr. Patricia Thomas in Cape Coast, Dr. Bill and Dr. Patricia Turner in Tamale, Lillian in Kumasi, as well as Walisu Alhassan in Tamale, a terrific guide. At viii Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology I am thankful to Dean Kofi Owusu-Daaku for our conversations, and to Dr. Willhelmina Donkoh for welcoming me to her classroom. In Cameroon, I owe a great debt to the International Research and Training Center (now the Congo Basin Institute), in particular Dr. Kevin Njabo, to my hosts in Bamenda, Foinbi Mildrate Yibe and Akomboh Walters, and to Ruth Nsang and Rilindis Okafor for their research assistance. Thanks also to the team at the American Corner in Buea. It feels rare to have been able to fold so many experiences into one graduate school career, and my dissertation committee made it possible. I am grateful to Aziz Rana for encouragement early in the project and for serving as external reader and offering up thoughtful suggestions. Ben Talton offered great advice for traveling, living, and learning in West Africa, and I would happily coordinate more conferences in Africa so long as Ben is at the helm. David Farber wrote me countless letters and pushed me to think more carefully about policy and politics. Bryant Simon is a role model teacher and Philadelphian, and I feel lucky every time we have a walk and talk. Richard Immerman embodies the finest qualities of the academy: he is unfailingly generous with his time and ideas, and he is a true advocate for students.