The State Department is preparing a plan to force visa applicants from certain countries to post large bonds guaranteeing they will not stay in the United States beyond their visas.
The department will begin a yearlong visa bond program in which foreigners applying for B-1 or B-2 visas and who are from countries the department has deemed to have a high rate of visa overstays may be forced to pay up to $15,000 as a condition of visa issuance.
The Federal Register has a notice that the State Department visa document is set to be published on Tuesday, and a copy of it says it will go into effect after 15 days, on Aug. 20. The program will go until Aug. 5, 2026.
The department is considering three options for the bond amount: $5,000, $10,000, and $15,000.
The notice does not reveal the countries that the State Department considers to have too high an overstay rate, but it said they will be shared once the program begins. It also does not specify the benchmark of overstays that the department will use to determine which countries would be subjected to the bond requirement.
The State Department has historically discouraged similar efforts due to concerns that the process would be “cumbersome,” as published in Volume 9 of the Foreign Affairs Manual, and that there would be the potential for public misperceptions. However, the notice says those previous worries were “not supported by any recent examples or evidence.”
B-1 visas are for people temporarily traveling to the U.S. for business purposes, while B-2 visas are for foreign travelers coming to the U.S. temporarily for tourism or pleasure.
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This renews an effort from President Donald Trump’s first administration.
In November 2020, during the final months of his first term, Trump issued a temporary rule initiating a six-month visa bond program “aimed at assessing the operational feasibility of a visa bond program,” the federal register document said, but it never went into effect.
