The differential treatment of these two groups under existing law cannot be overstated, but also could not be more misunderstood. During the 2020 primary debates for the Democratic presidential nomination, nearly every candidate excoriated Trump’s separation policy, which used “zero tolerance” to prosecute all EWIs for their illegal entries and then used these criminal prosecutions to justify removing children from their EWI parents. without permission, referred to as “entry without inspection” or “EWI.” Overstaying is a mere civil violation, whereas entering without inspection is a federal misdemeanor. The other half of this population enters the U.S. The first group - who make up about half of the undocumented population - enter the country legally, after being “inspected” by an immigration officer, but subsequently fall out of legal status by overstaying their period of authorized stay (“overstays”). Continuing to refer to them as a collective group paints with far too broad a brush, because their lived realities, and potential paths to citizenship, are so vastly different. Our immigration system creates two distinct categories of “undocumented” individuals, or people without legal status in this country: overstays and EWIs.
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