An estimated 40 percent of the more than 10 million undocumented people in the US today came legally but stayed on after their visa expired. It's a major issue in the immigration debate.
Motorists wait in lanes of traffic heading into the United States from Mexico at the border crossing in San Ysidro, California, the busiest land border crossing in the U.S. An estimated 40 percent of the more than 10 million undocumented people in the US today came legally but stayed on after their visa expired.
Mike Blake/REUTERS
EnlargeAs the Senate?s ?Gang of 8? immigration reformers puts the final touches on legislation expected to be introduced this coming week, there?s a simple-sounding problem with a long-elusive solution that the group will have to finally nail down: how to figure out when and if the 150 million foreigners who come into the United States every year actually leave.
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The policy of following who comes and who goes from America?s massive borders and hundreds of air and seaports, known in immigration wonk talk as ?entry-exit? and formally as the US-VISIT program at the Department of Homeland Security, is one of the many issues the bipartisan group of senators vowed to tackle in their bill and is a particular priority for Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of Florida.
It?s not an academic issue: somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 percent of the more than 10 million undocumented people in the US today came legally but stayed on after their visa expired.
Although often overlooked next to the more emotionally-charged issue of securing America?s Southern border, the long-standing problem of figuring out how to make sure the nation?s legal immigration system is enforced is likewise vitally important ? and going to be politically contentious.
?Without a real entry-exit tracking system, the rest of immigration law is irrelevant,? says Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for lower immigration levels. ?You can have Herman Cain?s electrified fences and any kind of other ridiculous border control measure but if we?re letting people in legally and then not paying any attention to whether they leave, what difference does the border control make??
Why is this so hard?
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Congress has asked for a system for tracking entry and exit from the US by non-US citizens a half-dozen times, upgrading its request from a ?biographic? system of personal details to a ?biometric? system of personal identifiers (chiefly fingerprints) after the 9/11 terror attacks.
While the US has achieved a nearly-universal level of biographic intake when foreigners come into the country, there?s little exit monitoring at the nation?s land borders and some monitoring at air and seaports. And biometric screening is years away.
Today, all entering foreigners are subject to biographic and biometric screening. To determine when foreigners exit the country, that data is checked against airline flight manifests and, soon, Canadian data showing non-US citizens who cross the US-Canada border.
But getting to the biometric standard Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano believes would be ideal could take another half-decade or longer and cost as much as $10 billion, according to Republican aides on Capitol Hill who have studied the system.
In nearly two decades, then, Congress has asked for a viable entry-exit system on multiple occasions and gotten a half-loaf in return. (By the end of this year, Napolitano told a Senate hearing recently, DHS is aiming to provide country-by-country overstay rates.)
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