Chris Christie: Republican presidential hopeful calls for visitors to US to be tracked like FedEx packages

Would-be Republican candidate says 40 per cent of illegal immigrants are allowed into the United States legally with a visa and then overstay their visit

Chris Christie, a would-be Republican candidate for the White House, has called for visitors to the US to be tracked until they have left, as if they were courier packages (AFP/Getty)

Chris Christie, a would-be Republican candidate for the White House, has called for visitors to the US to be tracked until they have left, as if they were courier packages.

Declaring that he would hire the FedEx founder Fred Smith to set it up, the New Jersey Governor said: “We need to have a system that tracks you from the moment you come in, and then when your time is up, we go get you and tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘Excuse me, thanks for coming, time to go.’

“At any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is,” he said. “Yet we let people come to this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them.”

He said 40 percent of illegal immigrants are allowed into the United States legally with a visa and then overstay their visit.

Christie has been lagging in recent opinion polls and is in danger of not making the top 10 candidates who will participate in the next official Republican debate on Sept. 16.

Immigration has become a top issue in the Republican campaign, with front-runner Donald Trump vowing to deport all of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants and to build a wall along the southern border.

Additional reporting by Reuters