The United States Department of State has announced the first foreign citizens to be subject to bonds of up to $15,000 should they visit the country on tourist visas.
On Tuesday, Zambia and Malawi, both African countries, were the inaugural entries on a list of countries that the State Department will subject to visa bonds.
The idea, announced earlier this week, is to impose bonds on countries whose citizens have high rates of overstaying their US visas.
Tourists from those countries would have to pay an amount ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 at the time of their visa interview to enter the US. Then, if the tourist departs on or before their visa’s expiration, that amount would be refunded to them.
The money would also be returned if the visa were cancelled, if the travel does not occur, or if the tourist is denied entry into the US.
Should a tourist overstay their visa — or apply for asylum or another immigration-related programme while in the US — the federal government would keep the money.
More countries, in addition to Malawi and Zambia, are expected to be added to the list. The bond requirement is slated to take effect for those two countries starting on August 20.
“This targeted, common-sense measure reinforces the administration’s commitment to US immigration law while deterring visa overstays,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Tuesday.
US President Donald Trump has taken a hardline approach to immigration since his return to office in January for a second term.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order called “Protecting the American People Against Invasion”, which denounced the “unprecedented flood of illegal immigration” into the US.
It pledged to forcefully execute US immigration laws. That executive order was ultimately cited as the basis for the new visa bonds.
The bonds are part of a pilot programme announced on Monday, slated to last 12 months.
“This [temporary final rule] addresses the Trump Administration’s call to protect the American people by faithfully executing the immigration laws of the United States,” a filing to the Federal Register reads.
Every year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) releases a report about visa overstays in the US.
The most recent report, released in 2024, found that there were 565,155 visa overstays for fiscal year 2023. That amounted to only 1.45 percent of the total non-immigrant admissions into the US.
“In other words, 98.55 percent of the in-scope nonimmigrant visitors departed the United States on-time and in accordance with the terms of their admission,” the report explains.
In its breakdown of country-by-country overstay rates, the report indicated that both Malawi and Zambia had relatively high visa overstay rates, at 14.3 and 11.1 percent, respectively.
But Zambia and Malawi are both smaller countries with relatively few tourism- or business-related arrivals in the US.
According to the report, only 1,655 people arrived from Malawi in fiscal year 2023 for business or pleasure. Of that total, 237 overstayed their visas.
Meanwhile, 3,493 people arrived from Zambia for tourism or business during the same time frame. Of that total, 388 surpassed their visa limits.
Those numbers are dwarfed by the sheer numbers from larger, more populous countries with larger consumer bases. An estimated 20,811 Brazilians stayed in the US longer than their tourism or business visas allowed, for instance, and 40,884 overstays were from Colombia.
Critics have also pointed out that the newly imposed bonds put travel to the US — already a pricey prospect — further out of reach for residents of poorer countries.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group, was among those that denounced the new bond scheme as discriminatory. It described the system as a form of exploitation — a “legalised shakedown” — in a statement on Tuesday.
“This is not about national security,” said Robert McCaw, CAIR’s government affairs director. “It’s about weaponising immigration policy to extort vulnerable visitors, punish disfavored countries, and turn America’s welcome mat into a paywall.”
Citizens of countries that are part of the US’s visa waiver programmes are not subject to the visa bonds unveiled this week.
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