The number of immigrants with expired temporary visas living in the U.S. have outnumbered undocumented immigrants by half a million since 2007, says a report published in the Journal on Migration and Human Security.
The report, issued by the Center for Immigration Studies, took aim at President Donald Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a project it said, "does not reflect the reality of how the large majority of persons now become undocumented."
The authors, Robert Warren and Donald Kerwin, write "two-thirds of those who arrived in 2014 did not illegally cross a border, but were admitted (after screening) on non-immigrant (temporary) visas, and then overstayed their period of admission or otherwise violated the terms of their visas."
CMS found the following, with information on overstays for 2015 derived by the Department of Homeland Security:
- 42 percent of the total undocumented population (about 4.5 million U.S. residents) in 2014 were overstays
- Overstays have exceeded the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. every year since 2007
- 600,000 more overstays than undocumented immigrants have arrived in the U.S. since 2007
- California has the largest number of overstays with 890,000, followed by New York (520,000) and Texas (475,000)
Trump's border wall will cost as much as $21.6 billion to build and take 3.5 years to complete, Reuters reported earlier this week.
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