There’s a brand new growth within the Trump administration’s full-court press to bar foreigners from coming to the USA: Why not cost overseas vacationers an exorbitant amount of cash to go to right here? The State Division introduced this grand plan on Tuesday, calling it a “pilot” program that can be in impact for one 12 months.
Ostensibly, that is focused at nations with excessive visa overstay charges. The notion is that guests pays a bond of a minimum of $5,000 and as excessive as $15,000. Consular officers get to set the bond based mostly on “any information provided by the visa applicant on the visa application or in the visa interview regarding the alien’s purpose of travel, current employment, income, skills, and education.”
This new extortion racket isn’t grounded in any legislation. The official publication of the rule within the Federal Register justifies this solely by referencing President Donald Trump’s quite a few govt orders as in the event that they have been legislation. So, when Trump popped off together with his racist “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” govt order on Day 1 of his second time period, the entire of the federal authorities tilted towards limiting immigration. Now, apparently, these efforts have turned to limiting guests.
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The primary two nations that the administration has arbitrarily determined can be included within the pilot program are Malawi and Zambia. In accordance with the administration, that is based mostly on their overstay price from DHS’s 2023 report. Besides, as NBC identified, these two nations aren’t the highest overstayers famous in that report—that may be Laos. Haiti, and Chad. Nevertheless, folks from these nations are already barred from coming right here because of Trump’s journey ban 2.0, so apparently Secretary of State Marco Rubio needed to go down the record to seek out different nations to focus on.
In fact, like all issues immigration-related within the Trump administration, the nations 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 use for asylum or another nonimmigrant standing, that’s a breach of the bond situations 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 these efforts, however by no means worry: the administration’s “settlement” with Columbia College requires the varsity to lower worldwide pupil enrollment.
This push to drive out worldwide college students is catastrophically unhealthy for larger schooling and the financial system. Over 1.1 million worldwide college students contributed $44 billion to the financial system through the 2023-2024 college 12 months. That’s on prime of the hit the financial system is taking from Trump’s haphazard and capricious commerce struggle and tariffpalooza. There’s already a major decline in worldwide tourism, and we’re on monitor to lose $29 billion from that.
Rubio continues to be one in all Trump’s most loyal foot troopers, serving to him isolate the USA and withdraw us from the worldwide group. The secretary of state stepped as much as preserve America secure by refusing to challenge visas to a Venezuelan Little League staff and the Cuban nationwide girls’s volleyball staff. 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 nations are topic to the bond requirement can change at any time—and everybody is aware of full effectively that nations can be added to and faraway from this record based mostly on how a lot they do or don’t suck as much as Trump. In the meantime, overseas guests of all stripes are going to maintain passing us by, as a result of who desires to take care of any of this?
