Visiting the United States is about to get exorbitantly costly for sure vacationers.
The US State Department has introduced the launch of a visa bond pilot program that may require vacationers and enterprise vacationers from particular international locations to pay bonds of both $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000 as half of their visa application process.
Officials published a notice of the 12-month trial program within the Federal Register on Tuesday, August 5. According to the discover, the bonds will apply to guests from international locations with excessive visa overstay charges or the place screening and vetting knowledge for vacationers is deemed poor, as decided by the Department of Homeland Security. However, the official record of international locations has but to be introduced.
The notices says that the trial program can be apply to all B1 and B2 visa candidates from a forthcoming record of international locations. B1 and B2 visas are for enterprise, tourism, or a mixture of each and are sometimes legitimate for six months to one 12 months. The B1 and B2 visas have been chosen for the pilot as a result of their admission interval to the US can be concluded inside the one-year pilot “allowing for data collection at all stages of the process,” in accordance to the discover. For now, the bonds within the pilot program will not apply to scholar visas, which will be legitimate for a number of years, or different visa sorts.
The bond quantity every visa applicant can be required to submit can be “based upon the applicant’s circumstances as determined by the consular officer but in an amount of no less than $5,000, unless the bond requirement is waived,” the discover states. Guidance within the paperwork present that consular officers can be suggested to set the bond at $10,000 most often.
Officials say that this system’s record of international locations can be launched on the State Department’s website when the bonds take impact in late August. After the preliminary record is revealed, international locations might be added or eliminated on a rolling foundation. The discover states that greater than 500,000 vacationers are suspected to have overstayed their US visas in 2023, in accordance to DHS knowledge.
Travelers who adjust to all of the phrases of their visas—together with departing the US on time and never accepting unauthorized employment—could have their bonds refunded. On the opposite hand, vacationers who breach their visa phrases will forfeit the bond quantity. Visa candidates will obtain a State Department electronic mail to the deal with supplied on their utility with the hyperlink to submit their bond quantity through the US Treasury’s Pay.Gov service.
Visitors from the 42 countries with which the US has a visa waiver settlement would routinely be exempt from the bond program, as they don’t want an entry visa for stays of 90 days or much less. The new bond funds will apply to all B1 and B2 visas for the listed international locations.
The visa bond program is scheduled to take impact 15 days after being revealed within the Federal Register, which might be August 20, 2025. When the initiative launches, vacationers topic to the bonds will solely be allowed to journey out and in of particular US airports that take part in this system, in accordance to the federal discover. Airports can be chosen for this system “based on their capacity to automatically confirm” that vacationers have left the US, which probably means hubs with facial recognition technology on the Customs and Immigration checkpoint. The record of airports can be introduced 15 days earlier than this system launches and will be up to date on a rolling foundation.
Visa bond insurance policies have been proposed by federal officers quite a few occasions, together with by the primary Trump administration. However, previous insurance policies have all the time been deemed too sophisticated and cumbersome to realistically execute. The aim of this pilot program, the federal discover states, is to assess whether or not visa bonds are possible on an ongoing foundation.
The bond program’s announcement comes because the US additionally plans to start charging some vacationers a $250 “visa integrity” fee. That payment, which is about to debut by the top of the 12 months, will apply to all non-immigrant visa candidates and will additionally doubtlessly be refunded to vacationers who adjust to the phrases of their visas.