A total of 527,127 foreign nationals who were admitted to the United States on non-immigrant visas and who were supposed to leave the country in 2015 failed to do so, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials told a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday.
“In FY 2015, of…nearly 45 million nonimmigrant visitors, DHS calculated a total overstay rate of 1.17 percent, or 527,127 individuals,” DHS officials said in a joint statement submitted to the House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, which held a hearing on “Overstaying Their Welcome: National Risks Posed by Visa Overstays.”
Some visitors stayed beyond their authorized visit, but left the country by Jan. 4, 2016, reducing the suspected overstays to 416,500, the statement continued.
In January, DHS released its first Entry/Exit Overstay Report, which contains data on visa overstays, defined as “a nonimmigrant who was lawfully admitted to the United States for an authorized period but stayed in the United States beyond his or her lawful admission period.”
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