The number of visas granted to foreigners should be severely curtailed until Homeland Security can demonstrate that they can manage and track all of the people being let into this country.
A staggering 739,450 people overstayed their visas to become illegal immigrants in 2016, according to a new report released Monday by Homeland Security that suggests the immigration problem has shifted away from people sneaking in, and toward people who came legally but refused to leave when they were supposed to.
“This report shows that we have a problem with visa overstays in the United States,” a senior administration official said in briefing reporters on the new numbers, vowing to step up enforcement to try to cut down on the violations.
The Trump administration’s report stands in contract to the Obama administration, which played down the numbers last year when officials released a similar report, focusing on the vast majority of travelers who did comply and leave when they were supposed to.
Indeed, more than 98.5 percent of those admitted through airports and seaports departed before their admissions expired in 2016. But the sheer amount of travel — some 54 million visitors who came through those air and sea ports — means that even that small overstay rate works out to nearly 740,000 illegal immigrants.
Some of the overstays were short-term, and they did leave eventually, but the majority were long-term problems. Nearly 630,000 were still in the U.S. at the end of 2016, for a persistent overstay rate of 1.25 percent.
Student visas holders were the worst offenders, with more than 5 percent of them breaking the terms of their visits — and a persistent overstay rate of 2.8 percent.
Almost none of the visa overstays are investigated, Homeland Security officials told Congress last year. Just 2,500 visa overstay cases resulted in deportations in 2015, or a fraction of 1 percent of the problem.