The other illegal immigration crisis: Visa Overstays

Until the 2021-2025 border crisis, the majority of illegal immigration in recent years started as legal immigration. The terror attack in Boulder, Colorado this week reminds us of this weakness in our system. The suspect arrived in the U.S. legally in 2022, on a tourist visa. That year, 850,000 people overstayed their visas – almost as many people as our entire legal green card system admits every year. His visa expired in early 2023, but he was granted a work permit by the Biden Administration and allowed to stay. The work permit and invitation expired in March. He still didn’t leave.

Sen. Jim Banks introduced the Visa Overstay Penalties Act this month, a bill to make overstaying a visa a misdemeanor offense that carries up to six months in jail and $1,000 in fines. Congressmen Nathaniel Moran (R-TX-01) and Randy Fine (R-FL-06) reintroduced the bill in the House (it was part of the House-passed H.R. 2 – Secure the Border Act – in the previous Congress).

Sen. Banks is also the sponsor of NumbersUSA’s Great Immigration Solutions Bill, S. 1328, the Nuclear Family Priority Act, to lower legal immigration by eliminating Chain Migration.

Chain migration spurs illegal immigration

Due to Chain Migration, distant relatives of an immigrant admitted for a particular skill may come to see immigration as a right or entitlement, simply because they are related. When they realize that they may, in fact, have to wait years for a visa to become available because of annual caps and per-country limits on several of the family-based immigration categories, many decide to come illegally while they “wait for their turn” — a turn that may never actually happen.

The promise of Chain Migration also encourages “birth tourism,” as this NBC News story about a birth tourism scheme illustrates:

“The organizers who allegedly ran the Carlyle site, Chao Chen and Dong Li, used a website to drum up business, touting the benefits of a child with U.S. citizenship: 13 years of free education, low-cost college financial aid, less pollution, and a path for the entire family to emigrate when the child becomes an adult.”

Chain Migration is the primary loophole that makes immigration unsustainably high

Over the last 35 years, the U.S. government has issued an average of over a million green cards every year; more than twice the level recommended by every blue-ribbon federal commission since 1969. The current system creates endless “chain migration,” and a level of immigration that is incompatible with conservation and economic justice. Over the most recent 35-year period for which we have data, an area greater than the state of Florida was paved over. During that same time period, wages have stagnated and inequality has grown worse.