The US State Department is considering bonds of up to US$100,000 for foreigners applying for immigrant visas at consulates abroad. Word of the internal discussions came from The Wall Street Journal on July 15, and department spokesperson Tommy Pigott confirmed the review a day later.
Applicants would post the money as a condition of visa issuance and recover it years afterward. Nothing has reached the Federal Register, and officials have not settled which immigrant visa categories the requirement would cover, or which countries would go first.
The authority already exists
Section 213 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) lets the government admit an applicant who fails the public charge test and no other ground of inadmissibility. He posts a bond, and the money holds the United States harmless against that outcome.
Under 8 CFR 213.1(b), US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) accepts such a bond ahead of visa issuance whenever a consular officer asks for one. Officers set the amount themselves.
No ceiling appears in the text, which requires only that the sum come to no less than US$1,000. A six-figure bond therefore sits inside the rule as written.
Consular guidance has long pointed the other way. Volume 9 of the Foreign Affairs Manual, at 302.8, tells officers to use the bond sparingly and only in borderline cases. Where likely needs would swamp the sum, the guidance reasons, posting it accomplishes nothing.
What a bond does not buy
Posting a bond does not by itself establish that an applicant will stay off public support, the manual states. Immigrants who clear the ground this way remain subject to affidavit of support and income requirements.
Officers cannot act alone either. The manual directs them to consult the Office of the Legal Adviser before using a bond in any case, and the sponsor files Form I-945 with DHS.
How the money comes back
Section 213 ends the bond when the immigrant dies, departs permanently, or naturalizes. Regulation supplies a fourth exit, and in practice the operative one.
Under 8 CFR 103.6(c)(1), USCIS cancels a public charge bond on review after the fifth anniversary of admission. Two conditions attach: the immigrant files Form I-356, and he has taken neither public cash assistance for income maintenance nor long-term institutional care at government expense. Accounts describing the money as refundable only on citizenship skip that route.
Filing carries weight here. Where no Form I-356 arrives, the bond stays live until someone submits one.
A tighter bond, three weeks old
Those exits narrowed on July 20, in the same rule that rescinded the 2022 public charge regulation. From September 18, receipt of any means-tested public benefit breaches a public charge bond, widening a standard that had reached only cash assistance for income maintenance and long-term institutionalization.
That rule also strikes the provision letting USCIS cancel a bond at any time on finding the immigrant no longer likely to become a public charge. DHS wrote the bond amendments to stand severally, so a court striking the wider rescission would leave them intact.
What Washington has said
Pigott framed the review as a way to preserve public assistance for Americans while giving applicants with means a further route to demonstrate self-sufficiency. Immigrants, he said, should “contribute to our society more than they take from it.”
State is working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on procedures targeting applicants whom the public charge ground would otherwise disqualify. Bond amounts could sit above or below US$100,000 depending on individual circumstances, per the Journal, and officials are weighing a pilot in a small number of countries.
Where the litigation risk sits
Immigration attorney Charles Kuck, speaking to Newsweek, drew a line between bonds that follow an individualized public charge finding and bonds that track nationality alone. Importing the categorical approach into the immigrant visa context would fit the statute poorly, he said, and “either way, there will be lawsuits.”
Adam Klein, a former senior DHS official, questioned whether Congress intended the authority to work this way. Immigrant visa applicants already clear sponsorship requirements and inadmissibility review, and the administration would need to explain what a bond adds.
Judge Leo Sorokin of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the administration’s US$100,000 H-1B fee on June 8, holding it a tax Congress never authorized. He stayed his own order days later, leaving the fee collectible while the government appeals, and a court in the District of Columbia had reached the opposite conclusion in December.
A bond stands on different ground. Money posted under section 213 returns to the payer, which weakens the characterization that sank the H-1B charge.
The nonimmigrant precedent
State has run a parallel bond program on the temporary visa side since August 2025, resting on a different statute. Section 221(g)(3) authorizes departure bonds of US$5,000, US$10,000, or US$15,000 for B-1 and B-2 applicants. Eligibility for that treatment turns on nationality: the department names countries with high overstay rates, deficient screening and vetting, or citizenship by investment (CBI) obtained without a residency requirement.
Successive expansions have taken the list from two countries at launch to 50. Antigua and Barbuda, Cabo Verde, Dominica, Grenada, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Tonga, and Vanuatu all sit on it. Which of the three criteria the department applied to any given country goes unpublished.
The temporary final rule behind that program expires on August 5. State’s regulatory agenda carries a rule to make the bond program permanent, and the department has yet to publish it.
What it means for investor applicants
An EB-5 investor commits US$800,000 in a targeted employment area or US$1.05 million elsewhere and documents the lawful source of every dollar. Gold Card applicants pay US$1 million plus a US$15,000 processing fee. Neither profile invites the public charge finding that section 213 depends on.
The exposure runs through process rather than eligibility. A USCIS memo in May pushed applicants toward consular processing as the default route, shifting more of the pipeline into the venue where consular officers would set these bonds.
Two dormant tools are waking at once. Guidance told officers to avoid the bond authority, and it now carries a six-figure number. Rules governing when the money comes back tightened this month.
