The United States could require up to $15,000 bonds for some tourist and business visas under a pilot programme launching in two weeks.
The Department of State notice released on Monday said that the effort aims to deter those who overstay their visas.
The 12-month pilot programme, which will begin on August 20, 2025, will target those seeking B-1 or B-2 visas from countries with high rates of overstays and deficient internal document security controls.
They could be required to post bonds of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 when they apply for a visa, although the document does not identify the nations.
In June, the US government announced that the possibility of full or partial travel bans on visitors from 36 countries with high rates of overstays among other concerns.
The State Department said in its announcement that the programme could bring in $20m over the course of a year.
The notice said that aliens applying for visas as temporary visitors for business or pleasure and who are nationals of countries identified by the department as having high visa overstay rates, where screening and vetting information is deemed deficient, or offering citizenship by investment, if the alien obtained citizenship with no residency requirement, may be subject to the pilot program.
It added that the countries affected will be listed once the program takes effect.
The bond would not apply to citizens of countries enrolled in the Visa Waiver Program and could be waived for others depending on an applicant’s individual circumstances.
In 2020 at the end of President Donald Trump’s first administration, the White House rolled out a similar six-month programme that targeted two dozen countries, most of which were in Africa.
It was not fully implemented due to the drop in global travel associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the notice said.
The Trump administration said that the new programme would be a diplomatic deterrent for bad actors trying to enter the US. According to the report, there were 500,000 suspected overstays in the fiscal year 2023.
Trump has made cracking down on immigration a central focus of his presidency, surging resources to secure the border and arresting tens of thousands of undocumented migrants, including many who are seeking legal status.
The administration has justified its arrests and deportations on repeated claims that those who are “unlawfully present in the United States present significant threats to national security and public safety” although overwhelming evidence has shown that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than naturally born Americans.
A report presented to the US House of Representatives in 2024 looking at Texas arrest records determined that both documented and undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than US citizens with undocumented migrants arrested less than half as often as native-born citizens.
A 2021 study by Oxford Economics similarly found that undocumented immigrants are 33 percent less likely to be incarcerated than US citizens.
A Diplomatic Tool To Ensure Robust Screening
Moreover, the notice stated that the Pilot Program is further designed to serve as a diplomatic tool to encourage foreign governments to take all appropriate actions to ensure robust screening and vetting for all citizens in matters of identity verification and public safety.
The release notes that historically the State Department has discouraged requiring travellers to the US to post a bond, saying processing the bonds would be “cumbersome.”
Visa bonds have been proposed in the past but have not been implemented. The State Department has traditionally discouraged the requirement because of the cumbersome process of posting and discharging a bond and because of a possible misperceptions by the public.
However, the department said that previous view “is not supported by any recent examples or evidence, as visa bonds have not generally been required in any recent period.”
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