A Grenadian can convince a U.S. consular officer that a trip to America is legitimate, show strong reasons to return home, demonstrate enough money to pay for the visit and still face one final test before receiving a visitor visa: Can you put US$15,000 on the table?
For many families, that may be the hardest test of all.
Grenada has been on the U.S. State Department’s list of countries subject to visa bonds since April 2. What began as a pilot programme has now become something more consequential.
On August 3, the State Department made the visa-bond programme permanent, allowing covered B-1/B-2 business and tourist visa applicants to be required to post US$10,000, US$15,000 or US$20,000 before a visa is issued.
The bond is refundable if the traveler complies with its conditions, including leaving the United States on time. It is therefore not the same as a US$15,000 visa fee.
But calling the money refundable does not make the burden disappear. A family still has to find US$15,000, transfer it to the U.S. government and live without access to that money while the bond remains outstanding.
That can turn a system designed to determine whether someone is likely to obey U.S. immigration law into something resembling a test of wealth.
The State Department’s own data make that concern difficult to dismiss.
During the pilot programme, approximately 20,000 visa applicants were told that they had to post a bond.
Nearly half ultimately did not pay it. The Department also reported that B-1/B-2 visa issuance among the countries covered by the programme fell by 83 percent compared with the same period a year earlier.
At the same time, overstays from the covered countries fell dramatically. The State Department points to that result as evidence that the programme works.
It may indeed discourage overstays. The United States has a legitimate interest in making sure visitors leave when their authorised stays end, and Grenada has an interest in cooperating with Washington on document security, information sharing and immigration compliance.
But an 83 percent decline in visa issuance raises another question: How much of the improvement came from changing the behaviour of travelers, and how much came from dramatically reducing the number of people who were able to travel at all?
If nearly half of the people presented with a bond never post it, the bond is not merely influencing what visitors do after reaching America. It is determining who gets there in the first place.
That distinction matters.
Consider two Grenadians with similar circumstances. Both have jobs and families in Grenada. Neither has violated U.S. immigration law. Both persuade a consular officer that they qualify for a visitor visa and intend to return home after a short visit.
One has access to US$15,000 that can be tied up in a government bond. The other does not.
Their intentions may be identical. Their immigration histories may be identical. Their willingness to follow American law may be identical.
Their access to America is not.
The permanent rule makes the relationship between money and mobility especially explicit. Although US$15,000 is generally the expected bond, a consular officer can lower it to US$10,000 or increase it to US$20,000.
In deciding the amount, the Department says officers may consider such factors as the applicant’s employment, income, skills, education, purpose of travel and connections in the United States.
There is some individual discretion in that system, but there is no ordinary procedure through which a traveler who cannot afford the bond can simply apply to have it waived.
The final rule provides only limited waiver authority exercised by senior State Department officials in national-interest or humanitarian circumstances.
For a small Caribbean country with extensive family and diaspora connections to the United States, this deserves more than resignation.
The most useful response from St George’s would not be simply to condemn Washington. It would be to press Washington for answers.
The permanent rule says countries can be selected because of factors including visa overstays, inadequate information sharing, weaknesses in screening and vetting, problems with identity or criminal records, and concerns over document security.
Grenadians deserve to know precisely which of those concerns led to Grenada’s designation and what measurable steps would permit the country to be removed. That should become a concrete bilateral objective.
Grenada should seek the data behind its designation, determine which deficiencies Washington believes remain unresolved, address problems that can legitimately be addressed and demand a clear path out of the programme.
Because the objective should not be negotiating a US$10,000 bond instead of a US$15,000 one.
It should be restoring a visa system in which an individual Grenadian is judged principally on whether he or she qualifies to visit the United States and can be trusted to return home — not on whether that person can temporarily place thousands of U.S. dollars beyond reach.
America has every right to enforce its immigration laws. But access to lawful travel should not quietly become a privilege reserved for those wealthy enough to post collateral.
Richard T. Herman is a award-winning U.S. immigration attorney and founder of Herman Legal Group. He has practiced immigration law for more than 30 years and is the co-author of Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy