Rep. Mark Meadows: House Panel Demands Accurate Numbers on Visa Overstays

A House watchdog committee has demanded that the Department of Homeland Security produce accurate statistics on the persons who each year stay in the United States longer than their visas allow, some of whom conceivably pose a threat of terrorism, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told The Daily Signal.

Some experts say the annual number of so-called visa overstays is far higher than the 500,000 the agency reported most recently, Meadows said, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is determined to get better statistics.

“The numbers that are out there are understated,” Meadows told me in an on-camera interview Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, revealing the committee’s letter to DHS was to go out that day.

“It only took a few visa-overstay people to take down the twin towers,” he added, referring to some of the terrorists who plowed two hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center on 9/11.

An estimated 40 percent of those in the United States illegally first entered legally by visa, then stayed longer than permitted–they overstayed their visas.

Watch the video for the details and to hear what Meadows, a member of the panel, said will happen if DHS doesn’t produce the requested reports.