Visas: Visa Bond Pilot Program

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF STATE <CFR>22 CFR Part 41</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Public Notice: 12783]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1400-AG01</RIN> <SUBJECT>Visas: Visa Bond Pilot Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of State. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Temporary final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this temporary final rule (TFR), the Department of State (the Department) announces the commencement of a 12-month long visa bond pilot program. Aliens applying for visas as temporary visitors for business or pleasure (B-1/B-2) and who are nationals of countries identified by the Department as having high visa overstay rates, where screening and vetting information is deemed deficient, or offering Citizenship by Investment, if the alien obtained citizenship with no residency requirement, may be subject to the pilot program. Consular officers may require covered nonimmigrant visa applicants to post a bond of up to $15,000 as a condition of visa issuance, as determined by the consular officers. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This TFR and pilot program are effective August 20, 2025 until August 5, 2026. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Visa Services Office, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Department of State; telephone (202) 485-7586, <E T="03">VisaRegs@state.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Summary</HD> This TFR establishes a visa bond pilot program (“Pilot Program”) under section 221(g)(3) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1201(g)(3), which authorizes consular officers to require the posting of a Maintenance of Status and Departure Bond (“visa bond”) by an alien applying for, and otherwise eligible to receive, a business visitor/tourist (B-1/B-2) visa  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> “to insure that at the expiration of the time for which such alien has been admitted . . . or upon failure to maintain the status under which [the alien] was admitted, or to maintain any status subsequently acquired under section 1258 of this title [(INA section 248)], such alien will depart from the United States.” <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  For purposes of this rulemaking, “B1/B2 visa” refers to a business visitor (B-1) visa, tourist (B-2) visa, or combined business visitor/tourist (B-1/B-2) visa. </FTNT> Historically, Department guidance generally discouraged consular officers from exercising their authority to require visa bonds under INA section 221(g)(3), as reflected in guidance published in Volume 9 of the Foreign Affairs Manual (“9 FAM”), section 403.9-8(A) <E T="03">Bonds Should Rarely Be Used,</E> <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> which states, “[t]he mechanics of posting, processing and discharging a bond are cumbersome,” and notes possible misperception of a bond requirement by the public. This view of a bond requirement is not supported by any recent examples or evidence, as visa bonds have not generally been required in any recent period, notwithstanding a 2020 pilot program that did not provide any substantive data. The Immigration and Naturalization Service Data Management Improvement Act of 2000 mandated the implementation of an integrated entry and exit data system with annual reports to Congress including among other information, “the number of aliens who arrived pursuant to a nonimmigrant visa . . . for whom no matching departure data have been obtained through the system or through other means as of the end of the alien's authorized period of stay, with an accounting by the alien's country of nationality and date of arrival in the United States.” A review of these reports going back over a decade demonstrates that hundreds of thousands of nonimmigrant visitors fail to timely depart in accord with the terms of their visitor visa. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The Pilot Program will enable the Department to assess the operational feasibility of posting, processing, and discharging visa bonds, in coordination with the Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) and the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), and to inform any future decision concerning the possible use of visa bonds to ensure nonimmigrants using these visa categories comply with the terms and conditions of their visas and timely depart the United States. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">https://fam.state.gov/FAM/09FAM/09FAM040309.html</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  See Section 2(a) of the Immigration and Naturalization Service Data Management Improvement Act of 2000 (Pub. L. 106-215, 114 Stat. 337, June 15, 2000) deriving from H.R. 4489 introduced May 18, 2000. As explained in the Congressional Record for May 25, 2000, section 110 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), mandated an automated entry-exit control system with collection of data related to individuals who overstayed their authorized stay. The legislative effort from 2000 provided then INS with additional time to carry out the mandated entry-exit data collection in order to carry out the purpose of section 110 of the IIRIRA, which was to track individuals who overstay their allowable stay in the United States. </FTNT> The Department published a temporary final rule in 2020 initiating a six-month visa bond pilot program, aimed at assessing the operational feasibility of a visa bond program, 85 FR 74875 (Nov. 24, 2020). However, in light of the worldwide reduction in global travel as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department did not implement the pilot and consequently it did not provide any data on the feasibility for full implementation. This Pilot Program responds to Executive Order 14159, “Protecting The American People Against Invasion,” which directs the Secretary of the Treasury, in coordination with the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, to “establish a system to facilitate the administration of all bonds” under the provisions of the INA. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Under the Pilot Program, as discussed further below, visa bonds may be required from certain applicants for B-1/B-2 visas who are nationals of countries identified by the Department of State as having high visa overstay rates, where screening and vetting information is deemed deficient or, Citizenship by Investment (“CBI”), if the alien obtained citizenship with no residency requirement. The Department will announce the covered countries via <E T="03">Travel.State.Gov</E> no fewer than 15 days before the Pilot Program takes effect, and this list may be amended throughout the pilot, with 15 days from announcement to enactment. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> In announcing the covered countries, the Department will also provide a brief explanation of the basis for requiring bonds consistent with this rule. The face value of visa bonds will be deposited in the appropriate account using the Treasury-hosted <E T="03">https://www.Pay.Gov</E> website via Form I-352, <E T="03">Immigration Bond.</E> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  90 FR 8443 (Jan. 2029, 2025). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Aliens traveling under the Visa Waiver Program fall outside the scope of the Pilot Program, as those travelers do not apply for visas. </FTNT> DHS regulations at 8 CFR 103.6 provide for the posting, processing, and cancellation of such visa bonds. However, the Secretary of Homeland Security delegated the authority to the employees of the Department of State, as designated by the Secretary of State, to perform duties related to the acceptance and processing of maintenance of status and visa bonds. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The Secretary of State consents to Department of State employees performing duties related to the acceptance and processing of visa bonds as described in this TFR. The Department will accept and approve the I-352. Under the process for this Pilot Program, consular officers will require the visa bond be posted via <E T="03">https://www.Pay.Gov</E> as a condition of visa issuance for certain visa applicants. After receiving the visa bond monies, the Treasury will place the visa bond monies in a DHS account, akin to an escrow account, held by Treasury subject to directions from DHS and/or the Department related to breach or cancellation of the visa bond as described in this TFR. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 8 U.S.C. 1103(a)(6); 8 CFR 2.1. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Purpose of This Rule</HD> The Department is publishing this TFR to establish the Pilot Program, including: (1) the criteria for identifying visa applicants who will be required to post visa bonds; (2) three levels for the amount of the bond, with the level to be selected by the consular officer based on an alien's individual circumstances; (3) how covered countries will be announced; and (4) the duration of the Pilot Program. The Pilot Program will help the Department assess the operational feasibility of posting, processing, and discharging visa bonds, in coordination with Treasury and DHS, for the purpose of ensuring the legally required departure of an alien from the United States as described in section 221(g)(3) of the INA. This Pilot Program will inform any future decision concerning the possible use of visa bonds to address the national security and foreign policy priorities articulated in Executive Order 14159. The Pilot Program is further designed to serve as a diplomatic tool to encourage foreign governments to take all appropriate actions to ensure robust screening and vetting for all citizens in matters of identity verification and public safety, to create safeguards in CBI programs that provide citizenship without any residency in the country, and to encourage specified countries with visa overstays to ensure their nationals timely depart the United States after making temporary visits. Executive Order 14159 directs the Secretary of the Treasury, in consu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 70k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━