Recent terror bust in DC highlights visa overstays problem

There is a hearing today in Congress that will focus on the problem of millions of visa overstays—people who came to the US on all sorts of visas and then just never left.

From AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — By the time the suspect in an alleged bomb plot against the U.S. Capitol was arrested in a parking lot, wearing what he thought was an explosive-laden suicide vest, he had been living illegally in the United States for 12 years.

The criminal case against Amine El Khalifi, 29, of Alexandria, Va., has renewed the debate about how the U.S. government — a decade after the terror attacks of 2001 — routinely fails to track millions of foreign visitors who remain in the country longer than they are allowed.

The Obama administration doesn’t consider deporting people whose only offense is overstaying a visa a priority. It has focused immigration enforcement efforts on people who have committed serious crimes or are considered a threat to public or national security.

A House Homeland Security subcommittee is conducting an oversight hearing Tuesday. The panel’s chairwoman, Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., said El Khalifi “follows a long line of terrorists, including several of the 9/11 hijackers, who overstayed their visa and went on to conduct terror attacks.” His tourist visa expired the same year he arrived from his native Morocco as a teenager in 1999.

Adding insult to injury he was unemployed and likely living on welfare/food stamps.

El Khalifi, unemployed when he was arrested last month, is one of an estimated millions of illegal immigrants who came to the United States with a government-issued visa and never left.

Remember the Uzbek found guilty in Alabama who plotted to kill President Obama—student visa overstay.

Aren’t these legal immigration programs grand!