The United States under President Donald Trump has placed Nigeria and other countries on a visa bond ranging from $5,000 to $15,000.
The new temporary rule means that tourist and business travellers from a dozen African countries, including Nigeria will pay a bond to visit the United States.
The new rule will take effect from 24 December.
Other countries whose tourist and business travellers could be subject to the bond requirement are those from Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sudan, Chad, Angola, Burundi, Djibouti and Eritrea.
Afghanistan, Bhutan, Iran, Syria, Laos and Yemen are also listed.
Nigerian travellers will have to pay the bond as some categories of visitors overshot the threshold of 10 percent and above overstaying rate.
Overall, out of 177,835 Nigerians who visited the US in 2019, the overstaying rate was between 9.45-9.88 percent.
A total of 17,566 overstayed. Out of the figure, 764 departed late and 16,802 stayed in the country.
But in other classifications, 11.12 percent of 9,336 Nigerian non-immigrant and exchange visitors overstayed.
Another 13.67 percent of in-scope nonimmigrant visitors also overstayed same year.
The U.S. State Department said the temporary final rule, which takes effect Dec. 24 and runs through June 24, targets countries whose nationals have higher rates of overstaying B-2 visas for tourists and B-1 visas for business travellers.
The Trump administration said the six-month pilot program aims to test the feasibility of collecting such bonds and will serve as a diplomatic deterrence to overstaying the visas.
Trump, who lost a re-election bid earlier this month, made restricting immigration a central part of his four-year term in office.
President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, has pledged to reverse many of the Republican president’s immigration policies, but untangling hundreds of changes could take months or years.
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