Chertoff needs to spend less time lobbying Congress for shamnesty and more time doing his job - except that he hasn’t done his job to date anyway. IMO he was the key problem in the federal response to Katrina. He only has excuses for being unable to track visa overstays. He bleats about needing more tools, but workforce sanctions were vastly higher under Clinton. He is a political hack that needs to be shoved out of office, given the National Security importance of his position.
Chertoff is worthless and should be dumped yesterday. Although that would accomplish nothing in a practical sense. He is doing exactly as instructed by his boss. As would his replacement.
That said, visa overstay thing is correct. Not that he would track them if he could. Nor does the government give a hoot. They are only interested in tracking American citizens for some reason.
My daughter was at a major [I won't tell you which] embassy in DC and held the post of State Department Liaison & Chief Protocol Officer. She dealt with a lot of visa issues. I've have heard lots of horror tales about the entire visa system. Two things that are real and serious:
1 -The obstacles placed in front of educated and skilled people from countries that are our allies are ridiculous and punitive. So much so that one could easily interpret the feds as not wanting skilled and educated people coming in.
2 -The system of (sort of) tracking visas after they expire is worthless. There is no national database and no coordination between state and federal authorities. The real surprise is that they find anyone that overstays a visa. So, what will happen to 12 million Z visas. Yep, you got it.