Washington
AP
—
The State Department is proposing requiring applicants for enterprise and vacationer visas to post a bond of up to $15,000 to enter the United States, a transfer that may make the course of unaffordable for a lot of.
In a discover to be revealed in the Federal Register on Tuesday, the division stated it will begin a 12-month pilot program beneath which individuals from international locations deemed to have excessive overstay charges and poor inner doc safety controls could possibly be required to post bonds of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 once they apply for a visa.
The proposal comes as the Trump administration is tightening necessities for visa applicants. Last week, the State Department introduced that many visa renewal applicants would have to submit to a further in-person interview, one thing that was not required in the previous. In addition, the division is proposing that applicants for the Visa Diversity 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 important to be certain that the U.S. authorities is just not financially liable if a customer doesn’t adjust to the phrases of his or her visa.
“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,” the discover stated.
The international locations affected might be listed as soon as the program 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 international locations enrolled in the Visa Waiver Program, which permits journey for enterprise or tourism for up to 90 days. The majority of the 42 international locations enrolled in the program are in Europe, with others in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere.
Visa bonds have been proposed in the previous however haven’t been applied. The State Department has historically discouraged the requirement as a result of of the cumbersome course of of posting and discharging a bond and since of a doable misperceptions by the public.
However, the division stated that earlier view “is not supported by any recent examples or evidence, as visa bonds have not generally been required in any recent period.”