The United States Department of State (State): Immigration Complexity

The Problem of VISA 'Overstays'

  1. Tourist/Vistor Visa B: for vacation, seeing family and friends, or medical treatment.

    [Editor's Note: Does State require the applicant's phone number and location/contact number/contact person of their visit? If Visitor has no phone, State could issue a mandatory, inexpensive, rental phone (with GPS) to the Visitor for contact purposes or requirement for Visitor to check-in. The Visitor will receive their rental fee/deposit for the phone on exit from USA if phone is in working condition. ]

  2. Business Visa
  3. Employment Visa
  4. Student Visa
  5. Immigrating to the U.S.
  6. Other Visas

[Editor's Note: the temporary Visitor who enters the U.S. using a Visa can comply with the above agreement or disappear into the USA. What is the procedure for apprehending and deporting violators? It is not possible for ICE's Enforcement and Removal to track each Visitor. Once it is known that a Visitor has violated the stay (how known?), State or ICE should issue a warrant for the arrest of these violators. Since the number of violators is so huge, in addition to warrants, State should require a type of a Bond for all visitors so that Bounty Hunters can apprehend violators and return them to ICE for payment like escaped criminals. This process takes time either for violator to make a mistake and be caught by local law or for the Bounty Hunter to find the violator. Visa 'overstay' should be a felony? Illegally entry into the country should also be a felony!

Currently, temporary Visitors are abusing the trust and their agreement to depart at the specified time or fail to file a form for extension of Visa time. ]

References:
  1. U.S. Department of State
  2. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO)
  3. Internet Sites of U.S. Embassies, Consulates, and Diplomatic Missions

 

[Editor's Note: The general assumption made by the State Dept. that Visitors will leave the U.S. when their Visa's term ends is faulty. At one time in history, people were more trustworthy, but this is not really the problem. Today, the U.S. may not be viewed as the benevolent country it once might have been. People realize the extreme difficulty of Visa enforcement, i.e., confirming exit or locating violators. State can no longer assume that this process will result in the voluntary exit by the Visa Visitor, although the majority do (what are the stats?).

A solution might be a GPS locator microdot secretly attached to the Visitor's passport (don't laugh, such devices exist or can be made). Ideally, the microdot would monitor on a low-power, interrupt basis until the GPS satellite 'pings' the microdot requesting acknowledgement. If a microdot cannot be sufficiently powered (pin-head sized battery) enough to transmit a GPS signal, then State could supply inexpensive phones for GPS location/contact or a U.S. State Dept. 'ID Badge' (GPS transceiver embedded in badge) either of which the Visitor must personally keep at all times.

The aforementioned State supplied phone or badge presumes that the Visitor has no mobile phone. Today, almost everyone has an iPhone® or phone with the Android® operating system that can be 'ping-ed' with GPS if the owner's phone number is known. It is impossible to predict the motives of some Visitors, so it is nice to know where they are at all times. Even though it's obvious a Visitor should, the Visitor should be told to keep their passport/phone/badge on their person at all times as a mandatory condition of entry into the USA.

New System (if State does not have equivalent)

A new 24/7, GPS Locator System (GLS) with several parallel processors could cycle through the millions of active temporary Visas to register the location of the person's passport/phone/badge. This presupposes an online modifiable database via workstation, e.g., Java Server pages, and a batch system to remove Visas that have expired legally. System Throughput should require each cycle through all active, temprorary Visas to occur every sixteen (16) hours. The GPS Location System would continuously cycle through all active, temporary Visas storing location, date, time, and time zone for each location.

If GLS cannot locate a given GPS signal or the same signal is at a frequently stored identical location, this might indicate that the passport/phone/badge has been discarded, however it is unlikely that a given Visitor would discard a personally owned phone unless the Visitor is "disabled". GLS would attempt to contact the Visitor by phone and/or issue a notice to ICE personnel to contact the Visitor. Inability to contact the Visa holder should cause the issue of a warrant and/or Bounty Hunter notification if the Visitor's visit time has already expired. If and when a Visitor exits the U.S. voluntarily by State time given, Customs can inspect and/or remove the GPS microdot from the passport or retrieve the State rented phone (refund fee) or ID badge.

Part of the whole system of people and computers requires close coordination between ICE and Local Law Enforcement. Since some states offer sanctuary, all federal monies given to these states should be terminated.

It is semingly unlikely that a person would lose or discard their passport/phone/badge unless they intended to violate their Visa and their trust with State. Although passport loss probably occurs more often than expected, this contingency should be handled (if it isn't already). ]