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The United States government will impose bonds of up to 20,000 dollars for nationals from about 50 countries, mostly African, who want to apply for tourist and business visas, as indicated this Friday by the State Department.
The measure makes permanent a pilot program that went into effect in August of last year and affects those applying for B-1/B-2 visas to travel to the US, coming mainly from countries in West and East Africa, such as Benin, Cape Verde, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Uganda, as well as four countries in the Americas: Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The government published the change today in the Federal Register, and it will take effect next Monday. Consular officials will have discretion in deciding the amount of the bond to be required from applicants, which may be 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 dollars, according to the document.
Under this program, applicants must pay the amount in order to apply for a visa. The money will be managed by the Department of the Treasury and the State Department, and, according to the government, will be returned to them once they conclude their stay in the US.
The Trump administration presents the measure as part of its campaign to reduce immigration and claims that it applies to countries whose citizens tend to stay in the US longer than authorized by their visas.
As the State Department noted, during this first pilot year, 20,000 applications were identified that had to pay a bond, and half of them decided to abandon the process and not apply for a visa.
At the same time, this restriction produced an 83% reduction in the number of tourist and business visas granted in the affected countries, the document added.
Migrant advocacy organizations denounce that the bonds create an economic barrier for legal entry routes to the US and especially harm citizens of poor and majority-Black countries.
[Publicidad]