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 international vacationers an exorbitant sum of money to go to right here? The State Division introduced this grand plan on Tuesday, calling it a “pilot” program that will likely be in impact for one yr.
Ostensibly, that is focused at international locations with excessive visa overstay charges. The notion is that guests pays a bond of at least $5,000 and as excessive as $15,000. Consular officers get to set the bond based mostly on “any info supplied by the visa applicant on the visa software or within the visa interview relating to the alien’s goal of journey, present employment, earnings, expertise, and schooling.”
This new extortion racket isn’t grounded in any regulation. The official publication of the rule in the Federal Register justifies this solely by referencing President Donald Trump’s quite a few government orders as in the event that they have been regulation. So, when Trump popped off together with his racist “Defending the American Individuals In opposition to Invasion” government 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.
Associated | Trump’s disastrous commerce struggle is killing US tourism
The primary two international locations that the administration has arbitrarily determined will likely be included within the pilot program are Malawi and Zambia. In response to the administration, that is based mostly on their overstay price from DHS’s 2023 report. Besides, as NBC identified, these two international locations should not the highest overstayers famous in that report—that may be Laos. Haiti, and Chad. Nevertheless, individuals from these international locations are already barred from coming right here due to Trump’s journey ban 2.0, so apparently Secretary of State Marco Rubio needed to go down the listing to search out different international locations to focus on.
After all, like all issues immigration-related within the Trump administration, the international locations that will likely be included on this pay-for-play association can change at any time. One other enjoyable truth: 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 concern: 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 greater schooling and the economic system. Over 1.1 million worldwide college students contributed $44 billion to the economic system in the course of the 2023-2024 college yr. That’s on prime of the hit the economic system is taking from Trump’s haphazard and capricious commerce struggle 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 in all Trump’s most loyal foot troopers, serving to him isolate the USA and withdraw us from the worldwide neighborhood. The secretary of state stepped as much as hold America protected by refusing to problem visas to a Venezuelan Little League workforce and the Cuban nationwide girls’s volleyball workforce. However not 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 nicely that international locations will likely be added to and faraway from this listing 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 needs to cope with any of this?
