Consider a Botswana-based tech consultant who travels to the United States once a year for a client meeting. She holds a B1/B2 visa, the standard route for short-term business travel.
However, Botswana now sits on Washington’s visa bond list, placing a critical condition on her next visa application: before her visa is approved, she must deposit up to $15,000 with the US government.
The money is refundable, eventually, but it sits frozen for the duration of her stay, earning nothing, while she still sorts visa fees, flight, and accommodation costs.
That financial burden is now spreading across the continent.
On April 2, the US expanded its visa bond policy. Six more African countries—Mauritius, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Seychelles, and Tunisia—were added to the United States’ visa bond programme, joining 24 other African nations whose citizens must now pay thousands of dollars upfront before entering the US for short-term travel.