U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio provides a media briefing in the course of the ASEAN overseas ministers’ assembly on the in Kuala Lumpur Friday, Malaysia, on July 11, 2025.
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The State Division is proposing requiring candidates for enterprise and vacationer visas to put up a bond of as much as $15,000 to enter the US, a transfer which will make the method unaffordable for a lot of.
In a discover to be printed within the Federal Register on Tuesday, the division stated it could begin a 12-month pilot program below which individuals from international locations deemed to have excessive overstay charges and poor inside doc safety controls could possibly be required to put up bonds of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 once they apply for a visa.
The proposal comes because the Trump administration is tightening necessities for visa candidates. Final week, the State Division introduced that many visa renewal candidates must undergo an extra in-person interview, one thing that was not required up to now. As well as, the division is proposing that candidates for the Visa Range Lottery program have legitimate passports from their nation of citizenship.
A preview of the bond discover, which was posted on the Federal Register web site on Monday, stated the pilot program would take impact inside 15 days of its formal publication and is critical to make sure that the U.S. authorities will not be financially liable if a customer doesn’t adjust to the phrases of his or her visa.
“Aliens making use of for visas as momentary guests for enterprise or pleasure and who’re nationals of nations recognized by the division as having excessive visa overstay charges, the place screening and vetting info is deemed poor, or providing citizenship by funding, if the alien obtained citizenship with no residency requirement, could also be topic to the pilot program,” the discover stated.
The international locations affected shall be listed as soon as this system takes impact, it stated. The bond could possibly be waived relying on an applicant’s particular person circumstances.
The bond wouldn’t apply to residents of nations enrolled within the Visa Waiver Program, which allows journey for enterprise or tourism for as much as 90 days. The vast majority of the 42 international locations enrolled in this system are in Europe, with others in Asia, the Center East and elsewhere.
Visa bonds have been proposed up to now however haven’t been applied. The State Division has historically discouraged the requirement due to the cumbersome strategy of posting and discharging a bond and due to a potential misperceptions by the general public.
Nonetheless, the division stated that earlier view “will not be supported by any latest examples or proof, as visa bonds haven’t usually been required in any latest interval.”
