Thread: Our view on visa overstays: DEBATE - USA TODAY

Our view on visa overstays: 1 in 3 illegal residents arrives legally and just stays

Despite many promises, lessons of 9/11, problem mostly gets ignored.
In 1996, Congress decided that it needed a way to track people who overstay their visas — a huge and understated part of the nation's illegal immigration problem. So it authorized a program to verify that visa holders who arrived in the country eventually left it.

Five years later, on 9/11, terrorists tragically confirmed that program's failure by flying hijacked airplanes into buildings. Two of the 19 hijackers had overstayed visas. In the years that followed, the newly created Department of Homeland Security initiated what it called the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program (or US-VISIT for short) with much fanfare.

But here we are in 2009, still without an effective entry-and-exit monitoring program. US-VISIT has enhanced the entry process, with a series of biometric authentications matching the person issued a visa abroad with the person standing at a passport counter. But when that person leaves the country, no such process takes place.

After studying the issue, and creating a few pilot programs, the Bush administration decided essentially to punt. Too much cost, too little benefit, it reasoned. The Obama administration is expected to announce its own policies in coming weeks. Don't expect much this time, either. The forces arrayed against the idea — budget pressures, the inevitable inconvenience to travelers, difficulties with airport design — promote procrastination.

That is a problem, both for national security and for controlling immigration. It serves as a kind of advertisement to people the world over that if they can just get into the country they can stay as long as they want, outside the law, without much hassle.

Either our government cares about its laws or it doesn't. Despite the costs, following through with this program is vital to sending a message that the U.S. is resolute in policing its borders, appropriately monitoring its visitors and protecting its people.

For decades, the nation's immigration laws were simply not enforced. Now there's ample pressure to tighten up, but it is overwhelmingly directed at Hispanics crossing the southern border. If one focuses on the numbers, not the language and complexion of the illegal immigrants, that shouldn't be the case. Overstayers are believed to make up about a third of the total population of illegal immigrants, which is thought to be somewhere around 12 million.

To be sure, the issues delaying this program are daunting. Thousands of people would have to be hired. And many airports would have to be modified to create departure areas with passport counters.

Neither the Transportation Security Administration nor the airline industry wants to be saddled with running the program. The travel industry is suspicious that government could do it without creating more hassles for legitimate tourists and business travelers. And some in the national security community shrug off the issue, saying they have alternative, though inferior, tracking methods such as airline passenger manifests and returned port-of-entry forms.

These are all legitimate, pragmatic concerns that explain why this program has been so slow to get off the ground. But they should not be allowed to undermine the principle that the law should have meaning.

Posted at 12:22 AM/ET, September 04, 2009 in USA TODAY editorial
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Opposing view: Tracking not efficient

Exit checkpoints won’t stop terrorism or illegal immigration.

By Stewart Baker

Should we fingerprint all foreigners as they leave the country?

I'm all for security, but stopping people as they leave won't keep terrorists out of the country.

No, this proposal is about immigration enforcement, not security. Here's the theory behind it: A lot of foreign visitors come here on a visa, then stay illegally after the visa expires. If we made everyone check out, we'd know who didn't leave. Then we could track them down.

Just one problem: We already do that.

Travelers coming into the country get a document that they must surrender when they leave. Ninety percent of all visitors do exactly that.

The other 10% fall into two categories: people who leave without handing in the document and people who overstay their visas. Right now, the list of that 10% is sent to immigration enforcement agents, who track them down.

Of course, they don't have enough money or agents to track down everyone, so they focus first on terrorism risks and criminals.

Would the exit proposal help the agents do their jobs? Sure. It would cut down on the number of people who don't hand in their paperwork, so the records would be a little more accurate and the agents would spend less time looking for people who have already left the country.

But to make our records a little more accurate, we'd have to build barricades at every outbound border crossing and make everyone stop to show ID and get fingerprinted. We'd have to hire hundreds or thousands more border inspectors. And the line to leave the country would be as long as the line to enter. It would costs billions of dollars.

Right now, we spend about $50 million a year tracking overstayers. Why would we spend billions to get savings in a program that small?

Maybe you think we should spend more to track overstayers. Me too. But why not spend it directly on more enforcement agents instead of building a slightly better record-keeping system that doesn't actually catch a single illegal immigrant?

Stewart Baker, a partner with the law firm Steptoe & Johnson, was assistant secretary for policy for the Homeland Security Department in the Bush administration.

Posted at 12:21 AM/ET, September 04, 2009 in USA TODAY editorial
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If Lo-Jack,which is a small tag put on cars and tracked by satilite,can track stolen cars why couldn't a similar tag be embedded in visas to track visitors.

When they leave the country,right before boarding a plane,the tag could be disabled and wa-la there would be a record of who left and who did not.

I know,it's to simple for our government who seems to thrive on confusion and inefficiency.

Visa overstayers are just a illegal as fence climbers.

SECURE OUR BORDERS

STOP THE INVASION OF OUR COUNTRY BY MEXICAN DRUG GANG MEMBERS

AND MILLI0NS OF OTHER ILLEGAL ALIENS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD

At least now the visas have expiration dates.

They can't get a drivers license in TX with an expired visa but that's being challenged in court by the usual special interest (can't say anything nice).

Banks, local governments and businesses need to stop accepting the old form and expired visas.

Dixie