The United States is making its visa bond program permanent for people from dozens of countries, after a one-year pilot period. The new system is planned to take effect on August 3.
The visa bond requirement does not apply to all countries or all US visa applications; it covers only nationals of countries designated by the US Department of State. Citizens of covered countries may be required to deposit a cash bond of up to $20,000 before a visa is issued.
Citizens of covered countries may be required to deposit a cash bond of up to $20,000 before a visa is issued.
According to the US Department of State's final regulation, the visa bond amounts will be set at $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000. The pilot program's $5,000 lower bond option will not be included in the new system. Consular officers are generally expected to set the bond at $15,000.
Depending on the applicant's circumstances, the bond amount may be lowered to $10,000 or raised to $20,000 in cases where the risk of overstaying the allowed period in the US is considered higher. The assessment will consider factors including the purpose of travel, the applicant's job, income, education, professional skills, and ties to the US.
Depositing a bond does not mean the visa will be automatically approved; the applicant must first meet all other visa requirements. The bond requirement applies to B1/B2 visa applications from nationals of countries designated by the US Department of State. The current list includes 50 countries, including Algeria, Bangladesh, Georgia, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Venezuela, among others in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Turkey is not included on the list, so the current regulation does not impose a general $10,000–$20,000 bond requirement on standard tourist or business visa applications by Turkish citizens.
The country list is not fixed; the US administration may add new countries with at least 15 days' advance notice and may remove countries from the list.
The visa bond is not treated as a final fee paid to the government for the duration of the applicant's stay in the US; it is refunded when the visa holder leaves the country in accordance with the rules. To have the bond refunded, the person must not exceed the permitted stay, must not work without authorization, and must comply with the other conditions of the visa status.
Travelers covered by the program will be required to enter and leave the US via commercial airlines, designated airports, or US border pre-clearance locations. If the rules are violated or the person does not leave on time, the entire bond may be forfeited. Payments will be made electronically in US dollars, and bank and card transaction fees will be borne by the applicant.
The US Department of State's pilot program results showed that the high bond severely affected not only visa violations but also visa application demand. During the pilot period, approximately 20,000 applications were determined to require a bond. About half of the applicants in the pilot program made the bond payment.
The total temporarily blocked bond amount in the pilot program approached $115 million.
The B1/B2 visa issuance rate in the bond-covered countries fell by 83% compared with the same period of the previous year. The US Department of State said many applicants chose not to pay the bond. In US fiscal year 2024, 45,488 people from the 50 countries in the program were calculated to have overstayed their permitted duration of stay. In the first 10 months of the pilot program, the number of overstays among those who deposited bonds remained below 50.
The $20,000 bond ceiling will be adjusted for US consumer inflation starting October 1, 2027, so it will not remain fixed for years. Subsequent adjustments to the visa bond ceiling will be made every seven years, with the newly calculated amount rounded up to the nearest thousand dollars. As a result of the inflation adjustments, the maximum visa bond amount may in the future exceed $20,000.
The US administration views the visa bond program as a tool to reduce visitors who do not leave the country within the permitted time and to push other countries to work more strictly on identity verification, document security, and information sharing. After the new system takes effect, the most closely watched issues will be whether the 50-country list expands and how much the high bond reduces tourist and business travel demand to the US.