Visitors from countries with high visa overstay rates would be subject to the new rule, but the State Department has not announced which countries will be affected.
Some foreign visitors to the U.S. will have to pay upfront bonds up to $15,000 to guarantee their departure from the country before their visa expires under a State Department pilot program set to take effect later this month.
Visitors from countries with high visa overstay rates will be subject to the new rule, but the State Department has not announced which countries will be affected. It indicated it would do so within 15 days of the program going into effect, currently planned for August 20.
Consular officers already have the authority to impose such bonds on visa applicants, but the authority has in the past rarely been used. An executive order was issued in January directing the departments of State, Homeland Security, and Treasury to administer a bond program. The first Trump administration had similar plans to increase use of bonds as a mechanism for ensuring visa holders don’t overstay, but those plans were thwarted by the pandemic.
Visitors who deposit bonds to secure their visas would also need to arrive in the United States at designated airports for processing. A list of participating airports will also be released 15 days before the bonds program is set to begin. At the end of their stay, visitors could either depart the U.S. from one of the same 15 designated airports, or visit a consular officer in their home country upon returning to demonstrate they have left the United States to have the bond released.
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It’s worth noting that the bonds would only be required for travelers from countries without visa waiver programs (VWP), meaning that visitors from most European countries and others including Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Qatar, Singapore, and Taiwan wouldn’t need to post bonds if they already qualified to visit the United States without a visa. In a 2024 report, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that fewer than 1% of VWP visitors stayed past their permitted length of stay, while visitors from non-VWP countries overstayed at a slightly higher rate of just over 3%.
Because the list of countries has not yet been released, it’s not possible to quantify any impact to the U.S. tourism industry. Trade associations representing the tourism and related industries, and other industries whose operations rely heavily on business visas will likely lobby for modifications to the pilot program, or submit feedback on its impact during the early phases.
The State Department’s notice in the Federal Register noted the program will apply to countries where “screening and vetting information deemed deficient,” and will also apply to applications for citizenship by investment.
The same Department of Homeland Security report from 2024 indicated several countries had visa overstay rates of 20% or higher, including Burma (Myanmar), Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Djibouti, Haiti, Laos, and Sudan. However, it should also be noted that, with the exception of Haiti, the nominal amounts of visas issued to travelers from those countries was low—often less than a thousand, meaning the number of overstays was also comparatively low.
It’s also unlikely that such a pilot program would be challenged in court. The executive order and pilot program planned by the State Department do not award consular officers any authority they didn’t already possess—they simply direct consular officers to deploy that authority more frequently, and adds additional framework for how that tool should be deployed.
The requirement to post a sizable bond in order to get a visa approved is likely to chill applications for visas and travel to the United States from affected countries, but depending on which countries make it onto the list, the impacts on the U.S. travel industry could be limited.