For years, we've been hearing about how imperative it is that we seal the border so we can stop illegal immigration to the U.S. However, this only solves about half of the problem. What the overwhelming majority of members of Congress and the media don't want you to know is that roughly 40-50% of our "illegal immigrants" are, in fact, illegal visa overstayers.
Source: http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/19.pdf
Visa overstays are criminalized, and people do get arrested on that charge. The problem being that very few arrests are made on visa overstays, as compared to border hoppings. In 2005, only 8,000 visa overstayers were arrested; weighing this against the lowball figure of 4.5 million visa overstayers actually here, that means only 0.17% of visa overstayers are being caught annually. The illegal visa overstayer population is constantly changing, however; 5,388,951 non-immigrant visas were issued (as in, "You can have permission to stay here temporarily but GTFO soon, OK?") in 2005 alone. By contrast, only 402,247 immigrant visas were issued, indicating that the U.S. government only intended those 402,247 foreigners to stick around that year.
Unfortunately for border security advocates, "GTFO soon, OK?" is essentially the limit of responsibility the government assumes for non-immigrant visas, as they don't pay much attention to tracking overstayers, rarely catch them, and don't devote much funding to fixing the visa overstay problem. This is compounded by the lack of Congress taking the issue seriously; in 2006, NPR reported, "Legislation currently being debated calls for 800 more ICE investigators in the next four years. Compare that to 6,000 more Border Patrol agents in the same period."
Source: Nearly Half of Illegal Immigrants Overstay Visas : NPR
Border Patrol, as you may surmise, catches the border hoppers and enables elected representatives to pay lip service to their constituents. ICE is in charge of interior enforcement of immigration policies--i.e., apprehending the visa overstayers.
In that NPR story, a former immigration agent stated: "If you send a package by FedEx or some other forwarding agency, you can tell minute by minute exactly where your package is. It doesn't seem that the technology should be all that difficult."
Doesn't it?
Is there a way to balance the whole "land of the free" thing with maintaining national security and preventing visa overstays without making everyone visiting this country wear a tracking bracelet like some sort of convict?
Source: http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/19.pdf
Visa overstays are criminalized, and people do get arrested on that charge. The problem being that very few arrests are made on visa overstays, as compared to border hoppings. In 2005, only 8,000 visa overstayers were arrested; weighing this against the lowball figure of 4.5 million visa overstayers actually here, that means only 0.17% of visa overstayers are being caught annually. The illegal visa overstayer population is constantly changing, however; 5,388,951 non-immigrant visas were issued (as in, "You can have permission to stay here temporarily but GTFO soon, OK?") in 2005 alone. By contrast, only 402,247 immigrant visas were issued, indicating that the U.S. government only intended those 402,247 foreigners to stick around that year.
Unfortunately for border security advocates, "GTFO soon, OK?" is essentially the limit of responsibility the government assumes for non-immigrant visas, as they don't pay much attention to tracking overstayers, rarely catch them, and don't devote much funding to fixing the visa overstay problem. This is compounded by the lack of Congress taking the issue seriously; in 2006, NPR reported, "Legislation currently being debated calls for 800 more ICE investigators in the next four years. Compare that to 6,000 more Border Patrol agents in the same period."
Source: Nearly Half of Illegal Immigrants Overstay Visas : NPR
Border Patrol, as you may surmise, catches the border hoppers and enables elected representatives to pay lip service to their constituents. ICE is in charge of interior enforcement of immigration policies--i.e., apprehending the visa overstayers.
In that NPR story, a former immigration agent stated: "If you send a package by FedEx or some other forwarding agency, you can tell minute by minute exactly where your package is. It doesn't seem that the technology should be all that difficult."
Doesn't it?
Is there a way to balance the whole "land of the free" thing with maintaining national security and preventing visa overstays without making everyone visiting this country wear a tracking bracelet like some sort of convict?
