The consequences of overstaying your US visa can be serious to say the least. A case I recently came into contact with was a 40 year old woman from eastern Europe, although she had now left the country she had overstayed her original tourist visa and worked illegally in the US for 17 years.

Her quandary was whether she would now be allowed back into the US. She went on to explain that she had indeed worked illegally but always with a valid social security number, so had always paid taxes through her stay in the country. It also transpired that her father now lived in the US, and had actually progressed from the US visa he had originally arrived on and was now a US citizen.

In hindsight I think the fact that her father was now a US citizen made her wonder what would have happened if she had gone through the correct channels, she confessed to me that she knew that she certainly wouldn’t be in the situation she found herself now. The lady was desperate to return as she had built up a life for herself in the country and regarded it as the place she called home.

I told her the news that because she had overstayed her original US tourist visa and therefore was illegally in the country, for much more than the standard penalised amount of a year, she would receive an automatic 10 year ban from entering the country. When I explained that because she had left voluntarily made now difference, except to alter the fact that the ban may have been increased to a permanent ban if she had been forcibly removed, she realised that she had made a huge mistake.

This echoes cases of people deported from America every day, over 300,000 a year, who have built up a life for themselves, but were always looking over their shoulder in case Uncle Sam was watching, knowing that eventually the day may come that they would have to explain their situation to US immigration.

So what now for the people that can no-longer return to the place they think of as home? Most will re-settle in their original countries, some more easily than others, what is clear however is that it is not straight-forward in the slightest. US immigration statistics state that a majority of people deported simply try to re-enter the country through the US’s land borders, meaning a whole new can of worms is opened with more added uncertainty and human traffickers entering the equation.

Overstaying your visa is a risky business