US Fails to Track Foreign Visitors Who Overstay Visas

Federal officials admit they've lost track of how many foreign visitors overstay their visas every year – despite a nearly 20-year-old law requiring the government to develop a tracking system, The New York Times reports.

Federal agencies haven't even provided a new report to Congress on overstays since 1994, the Times reports.

"Since 1996, Congress has required that an exit system be put in place to determine visa overstays," the House Oversight Committee sternly noted prior to a hearing on the issue Dec. 17.

"The biometric exit system has yet to be put in place, and DHS has failed to issue a mandated report to Congress on the number of overstays who remain in the U.S. in violation of the law."

Lawmakers worry radical Islamic terrorists could exploit the visa program because the United States doesn't routinely collect biometric information on people leaving the country – including fingerprints, iris scans and photographs.

And at the Dec. 17 House Oversight hearing, an official revealed that of 9,500 visas revoked over terrorism concerns since 2001, the United States doesn't know where all those former visa-holders are.

"Having accurate data on who is coming and going — not who is pretending to be coming and going — is essential to curtailing the insidious and increasing direct threat that ISIS is loudly declaring at our homeland," Janice Kephart, former counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee and a staff member on the 9/11 Commission, warned Congress last year, the Times reports.

At the House oversight hearing last month, however, Alan Bersin, the assistant secretary for international affairs at DHS, conceded "we don't know" when asked about the number of visa overstays.

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