Sen. Jeff Sessions said Wednesday that the government’s confirmation that hundreds of thousands of people overstayed their visas last year shows there is virtually no control over immigration under the Obama administration.
“Visa expiration dates have become optional,” the Alabama Republican said. “The administration does not believe that violating the terms of your visa should result in deportation. What we are witnessing is tantamount to an open border.”
Sessions’ comments come Wednesday following a Department of Homeland Security report issued Tuesday that over 500,000 people visiting the U.S. in 2015 have overstayed their visas.
“A shocking 527,127 individuals illegally overstayed past their mandatory date of departure. That’s more than half a million overstays in one year for this one category of aliens,” Session said in a release.
Sessions, the Senate’s leading hardline voice on illegal immigration, argued that these figures may actually understate the problem.
“These figures do not include any foreign students or any other foreign worker programs such as the H-1B, the L-1, the H-2B and many, many more. Nor does it include those who arrived through land ports, thus millions who came on border crossing cards are excluded,” Sessions said.
There are concerns that some of these overstays are from individuals from countries with high levels of terrorist activity: 1,435 overstays from Pakistan, 681 from Iraq, 564 from Iran, 440 from Syria, 219 from Yemen as well as Afghanistan, and 56 from Libya.
