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Visa Bonds

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Clarissa

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This is an excellent idea:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department is proposing requiring applicants for business and tourist visas to post a bond of up to $15,000 to enter the United States, a move that may make the process unaffordable for many.

In a notice to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, the department said it would start a 12-month pilot program under which people from countries deemed to have high overstay rates and deficient internal document security controls could be required to post bonds of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 when they apply for a visa.

https://apnews.com/article/state-department-visa-bond

This is an excellent idea. For people who want to do tourism or business in the US will not find these amounts onerous. Those who do are neither real tourists nor business people.

I don’t think this will actually happen but it would be an excellent way to mitigate the problem of visa overstays.

29 responses to “Visa Bonds”

  1. v07 Avatar
    v07

    — For people who want to do tourism or business in the US will not find these amounts onerous. Those who do are neither real tourists nor business people.

    Ask the AI what percentage of people even in the US have 15K in savings accounts (retirement savings do not count, nobody is going to take money from there just to go on a trip). There are a lot of beautiful and interesting places to see in this world, a legitimate tourist will go elsewhere. If I were subject to this bond policy and had a choice to go to Europe / Japan/ Australia / pretty much anywhere but Russia and North Korea without a bond or to the US with a bond – why would I accept this kind of complications, even if there were 15K in my savings account?

    A lot of people also would not trust current US administration to return the money. I would not. (I do realize that Canada is not going to be on the list.)

    However, this will affect those who have no choice to go or not to go, somebody with sick relatives in the US, or something like that.

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    1. Stringer Bell Avatar
      Stringer Bell

      Fair point. Tourism to the US dropping as a result of Trump’s actions. Whether this is a catastrophe, I don’t know.

      https://archive.md/pcwWT

      From the Wall Street Journal:

      It’s Summer Vacation Time. Tourists Are Saying No to America.

      Overseas travelers are demonstrating their ire at the U.S. by taking their tourism dollars elsewhere

      About 1.9 million foreigners arrived at the U.S.’s main airports in the past four weeks, down 6% from the same period last year, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Airline bookings data for the summer suggest things won’t be picking up soon. Flight bookings to the U.S. from Europe are down by about 12% through August. San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles are seeing even larger declines, according to an analysis of online travel-agency booking data from Cirium.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        The domestic tourism in the US is so gigantic that foreign inbound tourism is not a big deal in comparison.

        I’ve tried all sorts of vacations, and there’s nothing I prefer to my favorite Florida place. I returned from there a couple of weeks ago and today I booked another trip to the same place.

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        1. Stringer Bell Avatar
          Stringer Bell

          Oh yeah. That’s why I said v07’s point was valid but I wasn’t sure how catastrophic it would be to the economy.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply
          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            As a whole? Probably not a big thing. For certain locales, maybe a lot. Disney comes to mind.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I asked AI and it says this: “In the context of the entire U.S. economy, inbound tourism spending is about 0.87% of U.S. GDP in 2024.”

      Compared to the damage from the millions of visa overstays, it doesn’t sound like a bad tradeoff.

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  2. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Excellent news. Time for H1B overhaul and mass deportations. Haven’t seen much action along those fronts (25000 deportations per month barely qualifies as “mass”). And Trump carving out exceptions for agricultural and hotel workers is going to undo all the gains made.

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    1. Stringer Bell Avatar
      Stringer Bell

      H1B needs to be dealt with urgently.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Did you see that company that advertises high-paying jobs that you have to apply for by mailing applications by snail mail? These scheming, thieving bastards are manufacturing a case for an H-1B ask this way.

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        1. Stringer Bell Avatar
          Stringer Bell

          Haven’t heard of it but this doesn’t surprise me. And that’s my biggest problem with Vance. He is owned by the silicon valley tech class who’d love nothing more than infinite H1Bs. Remember, at some point even Trump was talking about stapling a green card to every STEM diploma?

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            This is the underlying issue for everything else. If this doesn’t get done, nothing else will help. The pressure from the right must be relentless on this.

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply
            1. Stringer Bell Avatar
              Stringer Bell

              Also on this. This administration has become DEI for Israel.

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Wow, and I was having such a great day.

                This is pretty disastrous, no pun intended. I very much hope it gets reversed.

                This is the kind of crap that loses people elections. There’s zero constituency this will please.

                So very disappointing.

                Liked by 1 person

              2. methylethyl Avatar
                methylethyl

                Ugh. Why?

                Liked by 1 person

    2. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      Agreed on H1B. And I hate the carve-outs.

      But I do wonder if whatever it is they’re doing isn’t a legit strategy? We do not have the manpower to mass-deport 30m people. So at least to my naive eye, it seems like they’re slicing the problem up into bite-sized segments: violent criminals first, border enforcement to stop the inflow, social security fraud auditing, crooked employers (want more of that, but really you only have to jail a few to deter the rest) investigated/arrested, ending the stupid catch-and-release thing, forcing some kind of grudging cooperation from our border-sharing neighbors, taxing remittances (did that go through?), going after DMV workers providing fraudulent ID and drivers’ licenses (several arrests locally– executed by state and local LEOs, but definitely part of the bigger national picture), just enough on-camera raiding of worksites to make people nervous, the “$1k and a free plane ticket, no grudges” offer, and very publicly deporting a handful of people to exotic “third countries”…

      There have been some subtle and suggestive changes around the area. Couple houses in my parents’ block that used to have eight trucks parked out front are abruptly empty. I drive with windows open, and I’m not smelling skunks at every big red light anymore– used to be all over town, now quite rare. That one’s fascinating: we have at least half a dozen legal dispensaries, plus billboards advertising docs who’ll help you get medical. It’s not hard to get legal weed. So… what does it mean that suddenly there are far fewer people getting baked in their cars during the day? Was that seriously just illegals doing that? Or did scaring the illegals into leaving or lying low have a dramatic impact on the supply? Different price tiers? Like are the people who politely get an Rx for their back pain and only smoke at home just the affluent users, and this has mostly affected the budget-tier dope smokers? So curious. The other thing: used cars are getting cheaper. I was in the market this time last year (so this is not a tax season vs. non-tax-season thing), and couldn’t find any listings for reliable cars in my price range. Now? Suddenly there are Honda and Toyota listings again, where they aren’t asking for a house downpayment. Is that connected?

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        Good to see some positive changes around you. I’m especially glad to hear about the used car market. When I came to Korea I gave my car to an acquaintance who didn’t do any maintenance on it and ran it into the ground. So I’ll need a used car when I come back to america at the end of this year.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply
      2. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        I’m seeing young white and African American guys on construction crews. Haven’t seen anything like this in forever. It’s such an unusual sight.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply
        1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
          oldcowboy3

          Kid, that is a critical change. Male wages stopped increasing in the mid 70’s — and with that so did marriage and children. And this doesn’t hurt ;-D

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  3. v07 Avatar
    v07

    I was not claiming that it will be catastrophic, I was taking issue with Clarissa’s statement that legitimate tourists would come up with the bond money.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      How are they planning to come across the ocean for tourism if $5,000 is a significant amount of money? These are people coming from farther away than the EU, which doesn’t need visas. They must be prepared for a big spend if they are going that far.

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        I think the argument is not that people who can spend $5k on an american vacation won’t be able to afford a $15K bond. It’s that those people will be turned off by policies like this and will choose to spend money somewhere else. We’re already seeing this happen and this policy hasn’t even been implemented.

        European and Canadian visitors (libtards. angry at trump. likely to cancel trip). south american/asian visitors (identify as POC. angry at trump’s “racism.” likely to cancel trip).

        This policy will deter both legit and illegal tourists to some extent. But then I don’t think there’s any policy that you can craft that will ONLY target visa overstayers without running afoul of some retarded civil rights law. So you gotta do what you gotta do.

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        1. v07 Avatar
          v07

          Since when “you mess with our economy, I withdraw my support to yours” became a libtard position?

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply
          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            Do you support Trump tariffing the countries that buy Russian oil?

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            1. v07 Avatar
              v07

              with all due respect, your question is not an answer to my question. I’ll rephrase – what makes one putting interests of one’s own country above those of the US, Russia, Ukraine, Israel or Burkina Faso or [any country other than one’s own]… a “libtard position”?

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                I wasn’t trying to answer because it’s not a liberal position at all, I thought that was obvious. Nationalism is not a liberal value.

                I’m simply interested in what you think. It’s easy to support Trump tariffing countries for aiding Russia. But then he seems to want to do the same to countries that have recognized Palestine. There it gets more complicated, to me, at least.

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              2. v07 Avatar
                v07

                Sanctions against counties trading with Russia may be among my priorities, but I am not assuming that the rest of the world must share my priorities. If people of the countries trading with Russia feel that the US is bullying them, they have every right to retaliate, both on the level of the governments (imposing tariffs on US goods) or on the level of individual consumers (not buying US goods, not visiting the US for tourism or shopping, etc)

                I am in Canada so US forcing EU to buy US hydrocarbons does not directly affect me. But I am concerned that it will backfire and this will be one more reason why current governments may lose to more nationalist parties that are, by the way, more Russian-friendly.

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              3. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                What do you see as a road to end the war, then? I’m honestly not seeing anything beyond greatly diminishing the Russian capacity to sell oil and natural gas.

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  4. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    Clarissa, you have to know that the Liberal Party of Canada’s insane supporting Palestine is stupid libtard politicking. A wise leader would publicly point out that Trump’s bitching about tariff’s on American dairy is an ignorant lie, because that penalty is exactly the f’ing percent that the USA’s subsidize their dairy and rely on the average American’s sense of fair play with a long term ally. That f’ing repeated ignorant lying and bitching really pisses Canadians off.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I think that recognizing “Palestine” is deeply stupid. Carney us spitting on his own citizens with this. However, my main focus is my own country. Why should the US further sour its already quite miserable relationship with its closest neighbor over something happening halfway across the world? This recognition of Palestine is a meaningless gesture that will change nothing because there’s zero interest among “Palestinians” in having a country. Why should we get involved?

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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