While President Bush is sending National Guard troops to the U.S. Mexico border, while people send bricks to help build a border wall, and while cameras allow internet users to watch the Southern border alongside the Minutemen one big fact remains, that millions of undocumented immigrants didn’t climb a wall over the border to be in the United States.

The little-acknowledged reality is that nearly half the estimated 12 million undocumented foreigners in the United States entered on bona fide U.S. visas — and simply never left. Authorities call them “overstays” who have been largely overlooked in the vitriolic debate on immigration.

It’s much more dramatic to create and perpetuate the mythical image of an invasion. It serves the interest of the right wing to show people who go to extremes to enter the United States. Who wants to think about a person entering legally and staying until well past their visa expiration date?

A study by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center last month indicated that 45 percent of the undocumented migrants in the United States overstayed legal visas.

So are the borders broken or is the immigration system broken? Or is the problem a little deeper and more global in scale?

Via / Yahoo! News