US-VISIT

Visiting the USA

What this page covers. Most people who come to the United States for a short stay — for a meeting, a holiday, a family visit or medical care — arrive as temporary visitors. This page is a broad map of how that works: the category itself, the difference between permission to travel and permission to enter, the alternative of traveling without a visa, and the limits that attach to a visitor's stay. Each of those subjects is treated at length elsewhere in this handbook, and the links at the end lead to those pages.

By Editorial Team , 17 December 2006

Is the Department of Homeland Security “TECH Challenged?”

With all the reports of high-tech surveillance by the government, one would think that the federal government, including the Department of Homeland Security (DOH), must be teeming with “tech geeks” that would make Bill Gates proud. Unfortunately, the reality may be the opposite: at least if we judge by DOH’s recent decision to throw up its hands and give up on even trying to track something as basic as who has entered and who has departed the U.S. through major land border crossings.

Enforcement

Overview. Immigration enforcement is the set of powers the federal government uses to decide who may enter the United States, to police compliance once a person is here, and to compel departure when the law is not satisfied. Most of it is civil rather than criminal, and most of it is administered by executive agencies rather than by the ordinary federal courts.