Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies published an op-ed on the Newsweek site yesterday discussing an under-reported source of illegal aliens: those admittedly legally who then overstay their visas.
In all, visa overstayers are believed to represent as much as 40 percent of the total illegal alien population of this country. A recent DHS report estimates that in 2020 alone overstayers numbered more than 500,000, most of whom came from within the Western Hemisphere. Brazil, with more than 50,000, furnished the most, with Colombia, Venezuela, China, and India each providing tens of thousands.
One such illegal is an Iraqi citizen named Shihab Ahmed Shihab, who came to America on a visitor’s visa in 2020 and never left. While here, he worked illegally at a number of restaurants around the country and at some point began working on a plot to assassinate former president George W. Bush. That plot led to his arrest last month. The DHS says that more than 400 other Iraqis also overstayed their visitor visas in 2020 and more than 48,000 overstayers came from the 10 countries most associated with terrorism.
Most overstayers have come in on tourist visas, but students and those with work visas overstay as well, in somewhat lesser numbers.
In general, Vaughan says there are few consequences for an individual committing the crime of visa overstay. “In 2021,” she writes, “ICE went looking for only a few dozen of the millions of overstayers living here.”
Although Vaughan suggests measures the administration and Congress could take, if so inclined, to deal with the problem, the simple fact is they have little incentive to do so. As with illegal border crossers, most are here to stay until and unless they decide to go home on their own.
For more, see Newsweek.