President Donald Trump, who is the outgoing President of the United States of America, has once again shown his dislike for Africans and immigration, and how badly he wants to keep them away from coming to the United States, with the imposition of a $15,000 bonds for all African travellers into the States.
According to the report by Reuters, President Trump announced the new temporary rule on Monday. The temporary final rule, which takes effect Dec. 24 and runs through June 24, targets countries whose nationals have higher rates of overstaying B-2 visas for tourists and B-1 visas for business travellers.
The Trump administration said the six-month pilot program aims to test the feasibility of collecting such bonds and will serve as a diplomatic deterrence to overstaying the visas.
Trump, who lost a re-election bid earlier this month, made restricting immigration a central part of his four-year term in office. President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, has pledged to reverse many of the Republican president’s immigration policies, but untangling hundreds of changes could take months or years.
Biden’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment related to the visa bond requirement.
The visa bond rule will allow U.S. consular officers to require tourist and business African travellers from countries whose nationals had an “overstay rate” of 10% or higher in 2019 to pay a refundable bond of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000.
Twenty-four countries meet those criteria, including 15 African countries. While those nations had higher rates of overstays, they sent relatively few African travellers to the United States.
Historically, U.S. consular officers have been discouraged from requiring travellers to the United States to post a bond, with State Department guidance saying processing of the bonds would be “cumbersome,” the temporary rule said.
Countries whose tourist and business travellers could be subject to the bond requirement include those from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sudan, Chad, Angola, Burundi, Djibouti and Eritrea. Other countries include Afghanistan, Bhutan, Iran, Syria, Laos and Yemen.