How many people enter the U.S. without inspection each year versus how many overstay visas?
Executive summary
The balance between people who enter the United States “without inspection” (illegal border entries) and those who become undocumented by overstaying visas has shifted over the last two decades, with several authoritative studies finding that annual visa overstays now rival or exceed illegal border crossings in many recent years [1] [2]. Exact annual totals depend on definitions and incomplete data—DHS and independent researchers provide estimates in the hundreds of thousands for both categories, but important gaps (notably “gotaways” and land-exit coverage) make precise comparison fraught [3] [1].
1. What the best estimates say about overstays (annual totals and range)
Federal and independent reports converge on a multi-hundred-thousand annual scale for visa overstays: the Congressional Research Service summarized that between FY2016 and FY2022 overstays averaged roughly 1–2% of nonimmigrant admissions, equating to about 650,000–850,000 overstays per year in that period [2]. DHS’s own operational snapshots and analyses have shown lower single-year tallies in some reports (for example, a DHS-derived headline figure of roughly 416,500 overstays in a single recent year for air and sea arrivals), illustrating year-to-year and methodological variation [3]. Independent research groups such as the Center for Migration Studies and policy analysts emphasize that overstays now account for a very large share—often cited as over 40%—of the resident undocumented population, and that overstays have been a leading source of increases in the undocumented stock since the late 2000s [4] [1] [5].
2. What the best estimates say about illegal entries (apprehensions, encounters, and uncertainty)
Border enforcement data show hundreds of thousands of apprehensions or “encounters” annually; CBP and related agencies routinely report Border Patrol apprehensions in the order of several hundred thousand per year, with spikes in recent years and declines at other moments [6] [7]. Some summaries have contrasted overstays with illegal crossings by estimating new undocumented arrivals: a recent charting of FY2023 suggested roughly 860,000 new undocumented arrivals from illegal border crossings versus more than 510,000 overstays that year, underscoring variability by fiscal year and method [8]. Crucially, analysts stress that apprehensions undercount total illegal crossings because “gotaways”—people who cross undetected or evade capture—are only partially measured by sensors and cannot be precisely counted, so total illegal entries are uncertain [1] [3].
3. Why comparisons are methodologically tricky (definitions, coverage, and “at large” counts)
Comparing “enter without inspection” to overstays requires aligning distinct data systems: overstays are measured against admission and exit records (air/sea I‑94 records are well-tracked but land exits have historically been weaker), while illegal entries are inferred from CBP apprehensions plus modeled estimates of undetected crossings (“gotaways”)—the latter introduces wide uncertainty [3] [9]. The Social Security research literature and DHS reviews both note that residual-estimation methods and improved exit-data integration have changed estimates over time, producing a rising share attributed to overstays even as border encounter patterns shifted [10] [2].
4. What the reporting consensus and the dissenting caveats are
There is a broad consensus among Pew, CMS, the American Immigration Council, and CRS that visa overstays have become a major driver of the undocumented population growth in the 2010s and 2020s, sometimes outpacing unauthorized border crossings in specific years or multi-year averages [1] [5] [2] [11]. However, official DHS and CBP operational statistics show large and volatile numbers of border encounters that can exceed overstay counts in particular fiscal years, and agency data gaps (notably land-exit coverage and the unknown size of gotaways) mean neither category is measured perfectly—policy debates over building walls versus investing in entry/exit systems hinge on these measurement differences [3] [12].
5. Bottom line for the question asked
Most recent authoritative analyses place visa overstays at roughly several hundred thousand to as many as 650,000–850,000 annually in the 2016–2022 window, while illegal border apprehensions and modeled new illegal entries also run in the hundreds of thousands to low millions depending on the year and whether “gotaways” are modeled; in many recent multi-year assessments, overstays have accounted for an equal or larger share of new undocumented entrants than illegal border crossings, but precise year-by-year comparison is constrained by data gaps and differing methodologies [2] [8] [3] [5].