Pakistan is not part of the United States’ recently announced Visa Bond initiative, which permits consular officers to mandate that a certain number of citizens from 50 countries who apply for visitor visas place up to $20,000 into a bond before they can be issued a visa.
The programme entered into effect on August 1st and is available for B-1 business visas and B-2 tourist visas. The countries included in the list are not listed in Pakistan in the US Federal Register. Bangladesh and Nepal are part of the South Asian region, and India has been left out. The programme is not open to Afghanistan or Iran, as the United States does not have normal diplomatic relations with either country.
In the permanent policy, applicants from the countries listed above may be asked by the US consular officer to pay a bond of between $10,000 and $20,000, which will be refunded upon final acceptance. If the visitor meets all the visa requirements and departs the US prior to the end of the authorised period of stay, the deposit will be refunded. But if the applicant overstays his or her visa or breaks its conditions, he or she risks losing the bond.
The bond requirement will not automatically be applicable to all applicants. On the contrary, consular officers will decide on an individual basis whether a bond is required to be posted for the issuance of visas.
The US State Department said officials have determined the programme should be made permanent as a result of a pilot programme in 2025 that brought a significant decline in visa overstays and greater compliance with US immigration laws. The department reported that in 2024, 45,488 visa overstays were reported from each of the 50 countries involved, and in the first 10 months of the pilot programme, a total of less than 50 visa overstays were reported.
The department also said the bond policy resulted in a decline in the number of visa applications that would be processed because some visa applicants would not go to the trouble of paying the deposit if they decided not to proceed with the application. The new rules include a maximum bond of $20,000 (up from $15,000) and no longer require a minimum bond of $5,000.
The programme today includes 50 countries, including 30 of those in Africa, and a few in Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
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