According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), 52,656,022 nonimmigrants visited the country in 2017, and of these, only a small fraction — 701,900 — overstayed their original trips.
The report based its findings on lack of identifiable evidence of departures, extensions of admission periods and transition efforts to other immigration statuses. In all, this led to a suspected in-country overstay rate of 1.15 percent. Such incidents have taken greater precedence under the Trump administration, which is making efforts to crack down on overstay violations and visas, increasing vetting of nonimmigrants and others, and improving both entry and exit data collection.
Of those with visas, only 0.51 percent overstayed their initial expectations. Those from non-visa waiver program countries overstayed more frequently, at 1.91 percent. Student and exchange visitor visas saw the highest rate of overstay but also had the lowest total number of people scheduled to depart in that period in general. Of 1,662,369 students and exchange visitors scheduled to leave, 4.15 percent stayed beyond the authorized window.
For those traveling from Mexico and Canada, rates were mostly on par with one another, though many millions more traveled from Canada to the United States in this period. Canadian overstays were at 1.01 percent of 9,215,158 people, while Mexican overstays stood at 1.63 percent of 2,916,430 expected departures.