Visa Overstays Make up Almost 40 Percent of Illegal U.S. Entries

The share of people becoming undocumented immigrants in the United States not by illegally crossing a border, but by overstaying their visas was almost 40 percent of estimated new undocumented immigrants in the fiscal year 2023. While an estimated 860,000 new undocumented arrivals were created due to illegal border crossings that year, more than 510,000 people overstayed their visas. This fact has in the past called into question the effectiveness of sealing off borders to curb illegal immigration. During the first Trump term, when the construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border took central stage, the number of overstayers even slightly outnumbered that of illegal crossers. Now, the Trump administration is also attacking on the other front, this weekend warning Indians not to overstay U.S. visas or risk lifetime bans to the country.

The absolute number of Indian visa overstayers in FY of 2023 was around 19,000 - rank 7 among nations, but the highest-ranking non-Latin American or Caribbean country. In FY 2016, this was still as high as 25,000 people. The stock of undocumented Indian immigrants was most recently estimated at 725,000 people - rank 3 after Mexico and El Salvador. In terms of illegal crossers (calculated based on the most recent data on border encounters), Latin American countries and Haiti made up the top 10 of the most common nationalities illegally crossing the Southern U.S. border, with Mexicans making up almost a third of all illegal crossers.

The prevalence of the different modes of illegal immigration has been changing in the last two decades. In the year 2000, 400,000 illegal aliens had come across the border and only 225,000 had overstayed their visa, according to a report by the Center for Migration Studies. The trend reversed in 2007 to include more overstayers than wholly undocumented entries and again in 2019, when illegal border crossings started to soar once more.