[QUOTE=JohnW]I asked this question of the immigration people when I was going through my application for a green card. The answer was that there is already a large British population here. I know that to be true although, I didn't consider it was a fully satisfactory answer to my question as I also know there is a large Irish population here.
John I also asked the question while going through the naturalization process and the guy told me that it is based on numbers and the US is proud to be country of immigrants. However, far more people are coming to the USA from certain countries than from others. Just those immigrating from Mexico, China and the Philippines are by far outnumbering those from most of the other countries accumulated. In order to maintain a diversity in the population, US laws regulate immigration from particular regions of the world. For this reason the USA do annually distribute 55,000 GreenCards randomly since 1994. The only prerequisite apart from the eligible native country is a certain level of education. You can find detailed information under „conditions for participation“
here. .
Excluded are only those countries with a rate of immigrants to the USA far above average over the last five years. But it is possible that these excluded countries can participate again in coming years.