Sarah Whites-Koditschek
al.com
(TNS)
Foreign visitors may need to put down thousands of dollars in order to enter the United States under a new proposed rule.
Starting Aug. 20, the State Department will require some tourists and business travelers to pay bonds of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 to come into the country. When they leave the country, the money will be returned.
The state department has not yet said which countries will be included.
How would US visa bonds work?
The 12-month US pilot program will target people traveling from countries with high visa overstay rates or with lapses in vetting information, according to Reuters.
“A review of (data) going back over a decade demonstrates that hundreds of thousands of nonimmigrant visitors fail to timely depart,” a government notice said.
Consular officers will have the ability to waive the bonds in some cases.
The new rules will take effect Aug, 20, for one year, as a pilot, according to the notice.
President Trump created a similar plan towards the end of his last term that was not enacted because of the pandemic. At that time, the countries included were Angola, Burkina Faso, Burma ( Myanmar), Afghanistan, Congo, Chad, Eritrea, Iran, Laos, Libya, Liberia, Sudan, Yemen and Syria.
The change is a part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to crack down on immigrants crossing the border or overstaying visas.
Trump has ended protected status for groups from countries like Haiti, Afghanistan and Honduras with dangerous living conditions and halted vetted refugees from entering the country except for South Africans of European descent.
©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit al.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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