40% OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS OVERSTAYED VISAS

Most Americans think immigrants without documents all sneaked in. Actually almost half of them came in legally and stayed when they should have returned home.    - - Donna Poisl

by WILLIAM BIGELOW

Roughly 40%  of the 11 million undocumented workers in the United States are foreigners who came legally mostly through visas but have overstayed the length of the visas or overstayed their legal residence here, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. These immigrants did not cross the U.S. border with stealth but rather obeyed the laws when they arrived. The scant hard evidence about this group indicates that they are better educated than non-visa illegal immigrants, and often speak English with greater fluency. They also tend to emigrate from Europe, Asia and Africa,  rather than Central and South America. In many cases, they used tourist visas to enter the U.S.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), who is working on the Senate immigration bill, “Whenever I use that statistic, people seem completely surprised. They assume that, yeah, some people overstay—but 40% of the illegal population here?" Flake commented that a sizable group of the overstayers exceeded the time limit on H-1B visas, which apply to highly skilled workers
Click on the HEADLINE above to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.