Sean Walker, BYU News Net, March 25, 2008
A new study published by the Center for Immigration Studies finds as many as half of the United States’ 12 million illegal immigrants arrived legally with temporary nonimmigrant visas. The study claims that as many as two-thirds of Mexican applicants and 88 percent of Russian applicants were granted tourist visas in 2007.
“Our immigration crisis has three main problems,” said David Seminara, the study’s author. “Our borders aren’t secure, it’s too easy to obtain visas overseas, and once foreigners arrive in the U.S. with visas, it is far too easy for foreign nationals to extend their stays indefinitely by adjusting their visa status or staying illegally.”
{snip}
“Indeed, the plans of visa applicants change frequently, and those changes frequently involve overstaying visas,” Seminara said. “Only tiny portions of those who overstay visas are ever deported.”
Seminara offers lawmakers and lobbyists a few recommendations that may help decrease the number of illegal immigrants who overstay their visa duration, such as creating a new corps of consular officers in the Department of Homeland Security whose focus would be strictly law enforcement and refocusing visa adjudication. Such changes will benefit U.S. economy by “improving the integrity of our immigration system, reducing the fiscal burden of illegal immigration, and enhancing national security,” Seminara said.
[Editor’s Note: David Seminara’s complete study, “No Coyote Needed,” can be read or downloaded on-line as an HTML or PDF document here.]
Original article
(Posted on March 28, 2008)
Comments
The reason our borders are NOT SECURE IS….NO ONE IN WASHINGTON WANTS TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. But it is up to us to protect us….our tax money is oversead in Iraq and other stupid hell holes around the world…and money goes to those big oil barons who have us over the ole oil barrel….Bush and the rest of the idiots are busy counting their money….they could care less about what comes into our country either by a stupid visa or illegally…by the way all of our jobs have gone across the border….across both oceans….and here we are in a DEPRESSION THAT THEY DENY EXISTS TOO….please we know what is going on and I just wish someone would wake up before it is too late!!
Posted by lydia at 8:18 PM on March 28
This is why we need to make the e-verify program mandatory. It is easy to get here but it is also easy to stay. Most of the illegals will go home if they cannot make any money.
This is also why we need to go to a system of biometric ID. These visa jumpers have to submit fingerprints to get in. Why not link up the INS data base with Social Security? They will be building the instrument of their doom.
Posted by hugo at 9:54 PM on March 28
Here’s one way to solve this:
Make the tourist visa require a deposit, which is reimbursed at the American Consulate in the home country after the tourist returns. If he doesn’t claim the deposit within a certain period of time (say two months after the visa expires), then it is forfeit.
This would weed out the people who can’t come up with the deposit, and it would also weed out the people who don’t intend to return. (Probably the two groups are the same.)
Posted by Reader-1 at 10:03 PM on March 28
You know, I’m surprised that no one has raised the issue in Congress that we could eliminate the greater part of illegal immigration simply by banning people with visas from Mexico. Second highest is Pakistan, btw.
Or we could simply make it a felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years hard time. Few illegals would risk that.
Posted by at 10:41 PM on March 28
I like your idea, Reader-1! It might be better than My idea.
My idea is that you overstay, you are a spy, and spend the next 20 years in prison.
Posted by flyingtiger at 1:47 AM on March 29
We should be ” more ” concerned, about the ones who are entering with no, or false documentation. No doubt, some are Islamic sleeper cell members, posing as Mexicans.
Posted by at 2:36 AM on March 29
One really tragic thing about this is it is very difficult for folks from some countries, I am thinking India and Philippines, to get into the US with even a tourist visa. People from these places are routinely denied, even if they have US sponsors. Once again the illegal flood is sticking it to folks who wish to come here legally and punishing people who try to obey the law while making it de facto legal to be a criminal.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 5:58 AM on March 29
Two good posts above about making entry into the US—via deposits on visas and felony status for overstayers—impose a cost burden on guests prompted me to do some thinking. I realized something, and wanted to submit it to others, since I’ve never seen it discussed—here or anywhere.
Specifically: Why should I want my home (community, area, state, country) to even be a “tourist destination” for foreigners? What’s in it for me and people I care about? What’s in it for you??
From my POV: not much. I’m not in government (those who collect taxes, or “fees” or “duties”, or any other euphemism for “taxes”). And I’m not in the “hospitality industry”. I will always prefer that my community—roads, businesses, public places—be as uncrowded as possible, for the perfectly legitimate purpose of my personal convenience.
Most of all, I have the unfashionable (for people who look, act, and think like me) but emphatically valid and natural desire to be around people who look, act, and think like me. That’s the exact opposite of the concept of “foreigner”.
It’s also the desire that, as I see it, explains the very existence of this website, and the fact that visitors—*you*—are even here.
So, to those who think “we need non-US tourists”: wrong. If I don’t need them, then “we” don’t need them. And I don’t.
I’m not an “immigrant”. The US is not a “country of immigrants”. There is no “right” of entry—temporary or permanent— to the nation built by my forbears. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Posted by Oops, the brainwashing wore off... at 9:24 AM on March 29
As a retired British couple living in Spain, please do not demand a substantial sum to visit the USA. Although I worked there in 1968 -70 as a Rolls-Royce Aero-Engines engineer at McDonnell-Douglas in St Louis and California, when the British government bought 170 Phantom fighter-bomber aircraft, I never got to see New York and now soon my wife and I have the time to spend a holiday there and about. But I am a pensioner, not a millionaire. Visitors need to be classed with profiles of their risk, then it would be easier to restrict illegal immigration, but US employers of such people also need to be sanctioned as well.
God Bless the United States of America.
Posted by Brian Deller at 2:27 PM on March 29
This is another example that are laws on immigration are not being enforced. It’s long past time to increase the noise level.
All those talk show radio airbags like Rush, Hannity, etc. are so proud of themselves for derailing the Bush-McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill that was crafted behing closed doors by 12 US Senators and 2 Cabinet officers.
But these same talk show radio airbags won’t condemn Bush in any harsh terms for not enforcing immigration laws. Why won’t the Justice Department prosecute Mayors and Governors of Sanctuary cities/states? In the report, there was a reference about one of those 9/11 “kids” (as Bush once called them) who overstayed his visa.
Posted by Vito Danelli at 3:39 PM on March 29
Hey, guys. The real problem is that we are a socialist county. Foreigners come here to reap the free benefits.
Revert to nonsocialism and they would have to either earn their way, starve, or go back home.
Posted by We're screwed at 8:16 PM on March 29
Not only does our government not enforce the immigration laws, the laws are insane, written by insane democrat politicans, as We’re screwed posted above, the laws we live under are more akin to those of a socialist government than a democractic society. if you’re tired of illegals, outta control social programs, affirmative action, all the ills the democratic party has inflicted on our country, you must, with your vote, send a message, enough is enough, vote those insane liberals and their sick concept of government outta office.
Posted by tall one at 5:42 AM on March 30
Hey, guys. The real problem is that we are a socialist county. Foreigners come here to reap the free benefits.
Revert to nonsocialism and they would have to either earn their way, starve, or go back home.
Posted by We’re screwed at 8:16 PM on March 29
This is the biggest problem….illegal alien get better protection in this country. One story to blows my mind is a woman who has five kids (supposedly no husband) is totally illegal but the government pays her $ 1350 rent every month. And Mexicans get a head start because of their numbers….politicians love the power of numbers…and the illegal immigration lobby is very big…..it includes churches and their Christian Socialism…Catholic priest call those who oppose illegal immigration fascist! So this is big business for some non-profit organization they stand to lose the most when the doors get closed. For profit companies would have to make the effort of hiring Americans if they want to stay in in business…
Posted by Lisette at 9:27 AM on March 30
Make the tourist visa require a deposit, which is reimbursed at the American Consulate in the home country after the tourist returns.
This is a terrific idea, and one that has already been contemplated in Britain (with howls of protest from it’s colonial rulers, the Empires of India and Pakistan).
But it would give an incentive for people to return when their visas expire. Not only do they forfeit the money if they stay illegally - they forfeit it if they return home too late, and don’t pick up the check from a US consulate, in THEIR home country, by a date certain.
But this law shouldn’t apply to people from every country. Instead the federal government needs to establish rigorous limits for people from any country where X percentage of people never go home - 10, 20, 40, whatever. No group of people from a basically law-abiding country, like Japan or Great Britain, shoudl have to pony up several thousand just to visit the US.
Or we could simply make it a felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years hard time. Few illegals would risk that.
One of the advantages to prosecuting overstayers is that the overstayers couldn’t claim ignorance of the law. It’s hard to prosecute an illegal who crossed the border the first time he gets caught - he can always claim he wasn’t aware he’d get X years in jail for illegal immigration. A person here on a visa can’t make such a claim. Make him sign a statement acknowledging his awareness of the penalty.
Posted by Alan at 1:45 PM on March 30
The idea of posting bond is a good one in that it would likely eliminate many of the poorer third worlders(although one has to realize that currently many illegals are paying large sums to get smuggled across the border so this may not be as effective as one might hope); the idea of making overstaying one’s visa a felony is a bad one for several reasons: immigration enforcement is ineffective currently; 10% of the prison population of the US is currently illegals; maintaining an illegal in a cell in the US costs at least $45,000/year; money that could either be spent elsewhere or, not robbed from us through the tax code in the first place).
Things must have changed, i.e. been relaxed, a great deal over the last 25 years as I recall one summer going to meet my English fiancee at Dulles where she was given the third degree by customs/immigration(she had a one way ticket); apparently they don’t do that anymore(she had to have my brother vouch for her financially to enter the country). What is strange at first sight is that the US government is much more interested in gaining intelligence on its own citizens(Real ID, etc)than it is in tracking potential illegals. With one ounce of real political will, we could have secure borders in less than a year at less cost than that of maintaining the Department of Homeland Security for a year. What is always lacking is the political will from Washington. With the prospects of either Obama, Hillary or Mccain in the White House next year, little is going to change on this front.
Right now we are justly concerned about keeping out illegals. Some day in the not too distant future we may be more concerned about how to get out of the country ourselves.
Posted by at 5:44 PM on March 30
I don’t like having illegals all over the U.S. but entirely to much time is being spent and to much worry over the Mexicans. There were no Mexicans flying the planes that hit our towers, there were no Mexicans that bombed our Embassies in Africa, there were no Mexicans involved in bombing the Marine Barracks building in Beirut, Lebanon in 82. The biggest threat to our country and way of life is from Muslims and Arabs and far to many people are missing this.
Posted by Skip at 2:04 AM on March 31
Wrong, Skip. Arab terrorists murdered 3000 Americans, but illegal aliens have murdered more than that many during the last seven years.
Do you really imagine that MS-13 gang members are here legally?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 12:45 PM on March 31
