America doesn’t know how many immigrants overstay their visas

According to a recent NY Times article, 20 years ago congress has passed a law requiring the federal government to develop a system to track immigrants who overstayed their visas. Despite spending millions of dollars officials can only roughly estimate the number of people in the U.S. illegally after overstaying visas. Officials blame a lack of technology. According to a 1997 report prepared by the former INS, it was estimated that 40% of foreign nationals overstay their visas – which is approximately 4.4 million of the estimated 11 million undocumented residents in the U.S.