A favored talking point of late among politicians and pundits is that there is no reason to build a border wall or physical barriers because it will not reduce visa overstays, which account for a growing percentage of the illegal immigrant population.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif .) recently tweeted, “Fact check: Nearly half of all undocumented immigrants come to the United States legally but then overstay their visas. A border wall would do nothing to curb visa overstays.”
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, one of a multitude of Democrats likely to run for president, noted in a new video ad that since 2007, the population of illegal aliens “has grown more through visa overstays than unauthorized border crossings.”
And virtually every opponent of a border wall was circulating a new report from the mass immigration advocacy group, Center for Migration Studies (CMS), says that for the past decade, “the primary mode of entry to the undocumented population has been to overstay temporary visas.”
“As these numbers indicate, construction of hundreds of more miles of border wall would not address the challenge of irregular migration into our country, far from it,” said CMS Executive Director Donald Kerwin.
Feinstein, O’Rourke, and Kerwin may be factually correct that a border wall won’t reduce visa overstays, but theirs is a false and misleading argument.
First, no one is arguing a physical barrier will combat visa overstays.
Second, more than half of the illegal alien population is comprised of visa overstays, but what about the other (almost) half who could be deterred by a wall or stronger enforcement?
Third, the report focuses too intently on the illegal population from Mexico, while ignoring the growth in foreign students and guest workers, overwhelmingly from India and China, who violate the law by overstaying visas.
According to the Department of Homeland’s annual “Entry/Exit Overstay Report,” of the estimated 1.7 million students and exchange visitors who were scheduled to complete their program in the United States, some 700,000 did not leave. China had the most overstays with over 15,000.
When asked in a recent Washington Post interview how he would approach the issue, Beto O’Rourke replied, “I don’t know.”
Well, a first step would be to stop undermining Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by allowing local and state governments to create sanctuaries that inhibit legitimate pursuits of overstayers .
They would implement E-Verify to ensure employers hire only those legally eligible to work. And they also would adequately fund the programs and technological upgrades needed to enable enforcement agencies to do their jobs.
7 Comments
Need Visas with GPS chips?? Log in time & send notices to Phone??other?
Improve Passports for Visas??
Something.
No one checks or has time to much less enforce.
Issue armband, wristband with Visa chip? or tie to AFDC??
Let a Citizen not pay their taxes and there will be repercussion, but if someone overstays their VISA, it’s ignored. The government is too big, it’s involved in too many things outside the Enumerated Powers of Federal Government in the Constitution. We need to purge the RINOs and return to Constitutional Government.
There’s a Border Crisis With Trump’s Zero Tolerance to Laws On the Books
Rock throwing mobs face our Army with tear gas at the border, caged kids, dead kids and concentration tent camps? No…the Open Border Party (OBP) back pedals now…there is no crisis requiring a barrier, its manufactured Trump lies….make up your mind OBP. Its not automatically right when you allege it, like putting Cohen’s [honest?….LOL] words in Mueller’s final report before its finished…
Does the OBP have magic seer powers? LOL…They think they do.
This obviously is the uneducated liberal view
That’s called a strawman argument. Build up some point to knock it down to avoid the real point. No one ever said it was only border crossers who were here illegally. But they are a substantial percentage and no one knows the real figures, because it’s beyond dispute that it is far more than the number caught. Wish it away as much as they want to, but hundreds, sometimes thousands, show up at the border every day. Those are not a figment of anyone’s imagination and estimates are that they represent less than half of those who actually cross. It’s like the argument that most of the drugs from Mexico are caught at a port of entry. But that is the ones we know of, many more shipments get across the open border areas.
It would be almost comical watching the liberal airheads in California tie themselves in logical knots about the teachers strike in Los Angeles, but as a state with 12% of the total electoral vote, it affects us all eventually. Class sizes are too big, they complain, 40 kids to a class. Pay is poor. Schools are outdated. But they hold the door open for every illegal who wants to come there and bring their 4 and 5 kids, and then insist on bilingual education for them, which costs far more than teaching in one language. Push comes to shove eventually, but they’re in denial like they always have been.
There is also the constant refrain of “we have a surplus”. Well there’s your solution, spend it on education. Except it’s essentially small change, the relatively small number of dollars left from the annual budget, which is only balanced by raising taxes every year. They complain about 5 billion for a wall, which would be worth every penny for them in not having their schools at the point of collapse, but they have already spent 80 billion on their “high speed train”, which is far over budget, will not be high speed in a lot of places, and is unlikely to have anywhere near the ridership projected because it’s anything but convenient for most people. All the critics who predicted exactly that were trashed as right wingers.
Visa “overstays” are no accident or a mere matter of inconvenience on the part of the alien. In most cases, the alien has committed FRAUD by obtaining a visa with no intent to honor its terms, and perjury by signing an I-94 customs declaration with no intent to exit the country upon visa expiration. These criminals deserve no leniency; warrants should be issued for their immediate arrest, detention without bail, and deportation at the earliest possible date. They’ve abused our laws, hospitality, and generosity.
And what group or party is the primary obstacle for ending visa overstayer violators and having a legal work force here in the U.S?
It is the Democrat party. Pelosi and Schumer are strongly opposed to a biometric entry /exit visa tracking system at ports of entry and also a mandatory E-Verify law. They fight like tigers against these illegal immigration enforcement reforms.