Latest DHS Report on Overstays in 2020 Brings Mixed News

The recent arrest of Shihab Ahmed Shihab, a citizen of Iraq who arrived in the United States on a visitor’s visa in September 2020, filed an asylum claim just before his authorized duration of stay expired, and proceeded to work on a plot to assassinate former President George W. Bush, has once again raised questions about how our temporary visa vetting could have again failed so spectacularly.1 According to the Department of Homeland Security’s latest overstay report, more than 400 Iraqis overstayed visitor visas in 2020. While not all overstayers are terrorists, obviously, our temporary visa system repeatedly has been exploited by terrorists who overstayed. Besides, overstays are believed to be about 40 percent of the illegal alien population residing in the United States, contributing to illegal employment and undermining the integrity of our immigration laws. This Backgrounder examines the statistics published in the DHS report and offers recommendations to address the persistent problem of visa overstays — those foreign visitors who enter on a temporary visa and fail to depart within the authorized duration of stay.

The newest edition of the DHS overstay report has good news and bad news.2 Overall, the number of overstays in 2020 went up very slightly from 2019, as did the rate of overstays. This is bad news, considering that for half of the fiscal year international travel was drastically curtailed due to the pandemic and fewer visas were issued in the second half of the year. The good news is that the number and rate of student and exchange visitor overstays continued to decline significantly, and the number of temporary worker overstays also declined notably. The most concerning news is that short-term visitor overstays, which is by far the largest category, generating more than half of all overstays, worsened significantly. And certain countries and categories remain a problem, both in the number of overstays they generate and the poor rates of visa compliance.

To improve visa compliance and prevent visa overstays from contributing to illegal immigration, Congress should direct the executive branch to boost interior enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and direct the State Department, which issues visas to foreign travelers, to take more vigorous steps to reduce approvals and improve vetting for categories of applicants who are most likely to overstay. Finally, Congress should consider creating and imposing more meaningful consequences for employers, schools, and other organizations that sponsor visitors who do not comply with visas.

Key findings:

DHS counted 684,500 overstays in 2020, up very slightly (about 1 percent) from 2019, when 676,400 overstays were counted, and just below the levels in 2016 and 2017.

Approximately 100,000 of people who overstayed had subsequently departed the United States by the end of the 2020 calendar year, leaving about 567,000 remaining in the country as overstays.

The most problematic category of visitors for generating overstays is short-term visitors who enter on the standard “B” visa. More than half of all overstays are in this category (353,000 overstays out of 684,500), and these visitors have one of the worst compliance rates of the broad categories identified in the report.

Student visa compliance improved considerably in 2020. There were nearly 49,000 student visa overstays in 2020, a drop of 39 percent since 2016. The student visa overstay rate declined by 50 percent between 2016 and 2020.

Approximately 105,000 foreign visitors who entered under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) overstayed in 2020, which is similar to the number in recent years. The United Kingdom had the most VWP overstays, while VWP travelers from Portugal had the worst rate of compliance.

Compliance in the category that includes temporary workers improved considerably in 2020, with overstays dropping by nearly 30 percent from 2019, the largest drop in any category. This drop was driven primarily by a large decrease in overstays by citizens of India.

More here:

https://cis.org/Report/Latest-DHS-Report-Overstays-2020-Brings-Mixed-News

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