There’s a brand new improvement within the Trump administration’s full-court press to bar foreigners from coming to america: Why not cost international vacationers an exorbitant amount of cash to go to right here? The State Division announced this grand plan on Tuesday, calling it a “pilot” program that can be in impact for one 12 months.
Ostensibly, that is focused at international locations with excessive visa overstay charges. The notion is that guests can pay a bond of at least $5,000 and as excessive as $15,000. Consular officers get to set the bond based mostly on “any data offered by the visa applicant on the visa utility or within the visa interview concerning the alien’s goal of journey, present employment, earnings, abilities, and training.”
This new extortion racket isn’t grounded in any legislation. The official publication of the rule in the Federal Register justifies this solely by referencing President Donald Trump’s quite a few govt orders as in the event that they had been legislation. So, when Trump popped off together with his racist “Defending the American Individuals Towards Invasion” executive order on Day 1 of his second time period, the entire of the federal authorities tilted towards proscribing immigration. Now, apparently, these efforts have turned to proscribing guests.
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The primary two international locations that the administration has arbitrarily determined can be included within the pilot program are Malawi and Zambia. In line with the administration, that is based on their overstay charge from DHS’s 2023 report. Besides, as NBC identified, these two international locations aren’t the highest overstayers famous in that report—that might be Laos. Haiti, and Chad. Nevertheless, individuals from these international locations are already barred from coming right here because of Trump’s travel ban 2.0, so apparently Secretary of State Marco Rubio needed to go down the checklist to search out different international locations to focus on.
After all, like all issues immigration-related within the Trump administration, the international locations that can be included on this pay-for-play association can change at any time. One other enjoyable reality: If somebody right here on a vacationer visa decides to apply for asylum or some other nonimmigrant standing, that’s a breach of the bond circumstances and the federal government will get to maintain the bond cash.
All of this matches with Trump’s different isolationist, nativist actions. He’s tried to bar Harvard from enrolling worldwide college students. The courts have blocked those efforts, however by no means worry: the administration’s “settlement” with Columbia College requires the school to lower worldwide scholar enrollment.
This push to drive out worldwide college students is catastrophically unhealthy for larger training and the financial system. Over 1.1 million worldwide college students contributed $44 billion to the financial system in the course of the 2023-2024 faculty 12 months. That’s on prime of the hit the financial system is taking from Trump’s haphazard and capricious trade war and tariffpalooza. There’s already a big decline in worldwide tourism, and we’re on observe to lose $29 billion from that.
Rubio continues to be one among Trump’s most loyal foot troopers, serving to him isolate america and withdraw us from the worldwide neighborhood. The secretary of state stepped as much as hold America protected by refusing to issue visas to a Venezuelan Little League group and the Cuban nationwide girls’s volleyball group. However no less than we’re letting in white South Africans, the one “refugees” Trump acknowledges.
As for the administration’s newest xenophobic ploy, which international locations are topic to the bond requirement can change at any time—and everybody is aware of full effectively that international locations can be added to and faraway from this checklist based mostly on how a lot they do or don’t suck as much as Trump. In the meantime, international guests of all stripes are going to maintain passing us by, as a result of who desires to cope with any of this?
