New US Immigration Reforms to Toughen Business & Tourist Visa Rules
The recently introduced US immigration reforms have been received with a lot of disappointment from business travellers and other tourists. As per the new rules, the Trump administration has mandated applicants from certain countries to pay a bond of up to $15,000, over the standard visa fees (which currently ranges from $160 to $300).
As per state policies, the American immigration rules will initially be implemented on a temporary basis for a period of six months from December 24 to June 24 as a test run. Affecting a total of 23 countries, the bonds will apply to all countries whose nationals had overstay rates of 10 percent or more till 2019.
The visa bonds will deter tourists overstaying visas considering the penalty of forfeiting money. This will target B-2 visas for tourists and B-1 visas for business travellers, thereby making the application process up to 50 times costlier than the current rates.
As per the State Department document, the new US Immigration reforms introduced under ‘the Pilot Program’ will “apply to nationals of specified countries with high overstay rates to serve as a diplomatic tool to encourage foreign governments to take all appropriate actions to ensure their nationals timely depart the United States after making temporary visits”.
Tourists and business travellers from the following countries will be the most affected by the new laws: Angola, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Laos, Liberia, Myanmar (Burma), Papua New Guinea, Libya, Mauritania, Eritrea, Sudan, Sao Tome and Principe.
Since most of the Caribbean tourists come from the US, the visa bonds will levy a significant impact on the Caribbean economy. Considering the US’ manhandling of the virus, several Caribbean countries have been forced to consider the former region as a ‘high risk’ country. Despite the launch of The CaribbeanAwaits Campaign by the Caribbean Tourism authorities, the region has not been able to lure tourists, most of whom earlier came from America.
Earlier in September, the US Department of Homeland Security had restricted visa terms to two years for some international students. The news came as a blow for African students, as the country accounted for 36 of the 59 affected countries. The proposed visa bonds will also impact 15 African countries, making the visa process quite expensive.
Even though the Biden administration has promised to revoke Trump’s travel restrictions, (including the Muslim Ban and immigration policies) it would be difficult to do so in reality as the policies were implicated after arduous screening.
