Twice as Many Canadians Overstay Visa Deadlines in US Than Mexicans Jeffrey S. Passel and D'Vera Cohn - Pew Research Center
go to original February 4, 2016

Under pressure from Congress to improve tracking of foreign visitors, the Department of Homeland Security has produced its first partial estimate of those who overstay their permits to be in the U.S. Out of 45 million U.S. arrivals by air and sea whose tourist or business visas expired in fiscal 2015, the agency estimates that about 416,500 people were still in the country this year.

The government’s report was limited in scope and includes no reliable trend data that could shed light on whether overstays are growing or declining.

The nation with the most visitors who failed to leave at the end of their authorized stay was Canada, followed by Mexico and Brazil, according to the report. Among total foreign arrivals counted in the report, those three nations accounted for more than a third of those who overstayed.

Congress has required the government to improve tracking of foreign visitors who overstayed their deadline to leave since the late 1990s, but interest ramped up after five of the Sept. 11, 2001, plane hijackers turned out to be foreigners on expired visas. Data on those who overstay also could add detail to the portrait of the nation’s 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants, because it is not known how many arrived legally versus illegally.



Read the rest at Pew Research Center

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