The Big Beautiful Bill has more and more warts that just keep coming out, including a new $250 “Visa Integrity Fee” for most foreigners applying for U.S. nonimmigrant visas. It’s a ‘refundable deposit’ that you’re supposed to get back for leaving the U.S. on time, though no one knows yet how refunds will actually happen. Implementing a cross-agency refund system is going to take… time. The fee amount will adjust up with inflation.
Fortunately, travelers coming in from Visa Waiver Program who don’t need formal visas won’t have to pay this. The same law also quadruples the Form I-94 land-entry fee from $6 to $24, and imposes a new $100 application fee to seek asylum in the U.S. The U.S. has ever charged people for seeking asylum protection before.
- Bizarrely ineffective: A $250 “integrity” deposit is too trivial to deter visa overstays or unauthorized work. Overstayers often stand to gain far more than $250 if they’re chosing to remain in the U.S. illegally.
- Punishes rule-followers: It forces honest visitors to tie up $250 and navigate an unclear refund process to get it back. Law-abiding tourists, students, and workers face more red tape and costs, while the rare scofflaw isn’t meaningfully deterred.
- Negligible revenue: Since the $250 is refundable, it’s not a reliable revenue source – except from those who overstay or who never navigate the refund. The deposit is meant to fund enforcement, yet if it works perfectly (i.e. everyone follows the rules), the government collects nothing. And if it doesn’t work, $250 is a drop in the bucket of enforcement costs.
- Chilling effect: stacking fees on top of wait time and in-person visits makes the U.S. less welcoming to legal immigration (which isn’t great if you say your concern is illegal immigration). Along a certain margin, tourists and business visitors go elsewhere.
Imposing a fee on asylum seekers strikes at the heart of America’s refugee commitments. Charging $100 (plus another $100 for each year an application is pending) to people fleeing persecution is unprecedented and cruel.
By definition, many asylum seekers arrive destitute – the very people needing protection are least able to afford extra fees and penalizes the vulnerable for government-caused delays (since asylum backlog keeps them waiting years, accruing additional $100 charges each year).
Remember that making the legal routes harder and costlier encourages more illegal immigration. And restricting immigration harms the economy by reducing the workforce and reducing business formation. . When immigrants enter the labor force, they increase the capacity of the economy, grow GDP, and increase tax revenue. Fewer workers and consumers lead to labor shortages and reduced consumer demand for incumbent businesses. Government-imposed tolls on peaceful, voluntary exchange is ultimately a tax on economic growth that hurts all of us.
Here’s what a Republican debate on immigration used to look like, by the way.
Additionally, the One Big Beautiful Bill’s tax on remittances encourages illegal immigration. By making it harder to send money across the border, it reduces the ties that people who come to the U.S. have back home, reducing the likelihood that they go back. It increases economic instability on the border, so that people are more desperate there and look to leave (taking risks to come to the United States).
There were no ex ante restrictions on immigration into the United States until the late 1800s (1875 Page Act and 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act). If you want to screen immigrants, fine, but we need more of it – more skills, more labor, and the U.S. is a better place (at least it has been!) for talent to flourish than most of the rest of the world. That means more ideas, inventions and creation for the whole world.
If these fees somehow enabled faster processing and higher caps, that would be good for the world. But too often critics of llegal immigration are really critics for foreigners period (usually foreigners who look different) and don’t actually support and grow legal immigration or more make it easier and less costly. This is the perfect example of taxing legal immigration.
I’m confused. Is this a $250 fee for someone with a visa that is paid when they visit and then (supposedly) refunded when they leave?
Open borders is the only humane, rational, intelligent solution. Borders are artificial demarcations used to keep out members of our own species. They serve no purpose but to stoke xenophobic bigotry among the ignorant low class of white Americans in flyover states who couldn’t hack it in a coastal corporate job and have resigned to wallowing in a dreadful existence where their primary purpose in life is fighting “the libs.”
@Erect Open borders is not as crazy of an idea as it sounds, but like a lot of things, there’s a lot of political capital in making it seem crazy. It’s a tragedy that we can’t have an honest conversation about immigration; both sides have too much invested in the status quo.
As you noted no one from a Visa Waiver Country.(which includes most 1st world countries) don’t have to pay so a non-event. For the others, if you can’t afford $250 you aren’t the type of visitor we need anyway.
@Erect – very few countries have “open borders” and many are much more restrictive than the US. Do a little research before you spout off
Thank you Gary. You’ve crossed this political minefield with sound logic.
People desperate to work here pay human smugglers thousands of dollars to get them across the border, often at significant risk.
I can not fathom why we don’t just offer a $5,000 green card.
Open borders are not a great idea as instead of getting the people who are really DRIVEN to come to our country, we also get everyone else.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free… oh wait, that was under every other president in U.S. history.
We don’t need many more immigrants (legal or illegal). The US benefitted from them in the past when available land was abundant and when immigration quotas were strict and allowed in only the cream-of-the-crop, but those are not (on average) the quality of immigrants coming to the US now and land is now scarce. A labor shortage is a great thing because it forces employers to raise wages. Yes, prices go up too, but not by as much. A labor shortage effectively acts as an implicit progressive transfer system from the wealthy, non-productive old to the working class young that elites can’t block through political corruption. Rent prices have skyrocketed the last few years. Yes, some of this is due to bad zoning restrictions, NIMBYism, private equity, and general inflation, but a lot of the rent inflation is also specifically due to foreign absentee home ownership and an unsustainably high immigration rate.
A $100 asylum seeker fee is a wonderful policy (though it should be even higher, say $2000). If an asylum seeker’s plight is truly sympathetic they can find a kind-hearted donor to pay the fee. But the vast majority of asylum claims are now fraudulent. They are used as a backdoor way of staying in the US as an economic migrant (due to the long court backlogs and the arduous process of deporting anyone once they are in the US interior).
@ Steven How much does a farmer have to pay you to pick strawberries? Or clean a toilet at your local hotel? Or process beef at a meatpacking facility? How old are you? Do you have 10 kids who are willing to do this kind of work? Because that’s what America needs if we want to keep the economy humming and pay for the benefits retirees paid into. So yeah, we need immigrants. You conveniently forgot that Trump killed a bipartisan bill to reform immigration last year. He’s on record stating it was because he didn’t want to help President Biden.
@ Christian, you should know your history better. We’ve had some form of restriction on immigration since the first exclusionary act was passed in 1875. Ever since then, we’ve been gradually increasing restrictions in a terrible patchwork quilt of legislation and regulation. I would love to see a simpler form of lawful immigration, but immigration reform has consistently foundered on the rocks of polarized politics. Obama deported far more people than Trump has, and earned the nickname “Deporter in Chief.” The Biden administration invited millions in unlawfully. This is not a problem of just our current POTUS or Congress. It is a problem that has been festering for decades. I like Brian Caplan’s approach to open borders for lawful immigration, but I’m not sure there is a pragmatic way to implement it.
At any rate, the aspirational words contained in “The New Colossus,” written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 have not since 1875 accurately stated this country’s immigration policy.
The US has open borders to Palau because of treaty. No massive problems has resulted.
The US should have mutual open borders and freedom to travel and work for the following countries:
Canada, Iceland, Ireland, UK (including Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, and British Overseas Territories), France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France, San Marino, Italy, Andorra, Spain, Portugal, Japan, South Korea, Republic of China (Taiwan), Singapore, Australia, Palau, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Tuvalu, New Zealand (including Cook Islands, Niue), and Chile.
In addition, there should be visa exemptions for registered students 23 and under for:
Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Fiji, Nauru, Uruguay, Brazil, Belize, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinadad and Tobago, Netherland Antilles, Barbados, Bahamas, Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Lesotho, Eswatini, South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, Liberia (if they lift visa requirements for US tourists).
Welcome to the rebellion Gary.
Sounds ‘great (again)’ for US tourism…
To His supporters: “Good… Goood… Let the hate flow through you!”
So you’re looking at an extra 1000 USD for a family of four for a non waiver country, with a low trust level they’ll get the deposit back at the end. Which is a non-trivial amount for the wealthy non-1%.
At which point, that family decides they’d rather go to Disneyland Paris instead because the path to an EU visitor visa seems less awful.
Lots of households that can easily afford to pay the extra cost will decide that it’s not worth the hassle of the extra steps and spend their 10K+ USD on vacation elsewhere where they feel more welcomed.
@Steven
‘The US benefitted from them in the past when available land was abundant and when immigration quotas were strict and allowed in only the cream-of-the-crop, but those are not (on average) the quality of immigrants coming to the US now and land is now scarce.’
Do let me know of the mythical time when this was true? Especially about immigration only letting in the cream of the crop (unless of course, your definition of ‘cream’ is keeping out say non Caucasian immigrants.
I’m surprised @Erect didn’t go on a pro-CCP rant yet. Recall, this is the same guy pretending to be a left-winger, who also uses @E. Jack Youlater, @Un, and @Unintimidated, and probably other usernames. Listen, feel free to troll, and to troll the trolls, but just know, I’m not using any names other than ‘1990,’ though someone tried to commandeer it once, claiming they were 6’6” (I ain’t that tall.) Anyway, Taiwan remains a free, independent country.
What a sad article. Cruel? The remittance logic is absurd. The illgals have $10-15K to pay the cartels but are too destitute to pay $100? Are you try to one up Steven Colbert??? Get your act together and write about interesting travel insights, not political dribble we can get from MSNBC and CNN hourly. You supposed to be a businessman, not a political commentary. Laredo is 3.5 hours from your home. Check it out and see what the real world is like./
*Illegals… didn’t see a way to edit a post.
I’m wondering how DisneyWorld, et al feel about this. It’s not so much the $$$, it’s the appearance of yet another potential complication for travel to the US for visitors. Today’s it’s $250 fee for certain folks; who is to say that in a month it won’t be everyone? Policy is so unstable and uncertain here, that it’s a deterrent to any tourist. Nothing coming out of the US now speaks to welcoming foreigners, be they illegal immigrants or turned-off Europeans seeking a family Disney vacation or a Caribbean cruise.
As an aside, I live in a 55+ community of 8000 homes in Florida. Our usually pristine lawns and trimmed bushes are starting to look untidy and weeds are growing everywhere. The massive lawn care company we utilize has just lost over 1/2 it’s crew and no replacements can be found to do the work, despite starting pay of -$19 an hour.
I am dreading the hurricane season. We’ve always had a difficult time getting roofers and other workers to come and fix the hurricane devastation in a timely manner. I cannot imagine what this upcoming season holds for us when over 50% of the construction workers have already left the country.
And no, I’m not a CCP member or LGBTQ or anything else but a centrist who is cringing at knee-jerk, hyperbolic reactions when there are simple, orderly solutions to our national problems.
@Jon F Our immigration policy was imperfect but mostly beneficial after the Immigration Act of 1924 (but before immigrant quality gradually began dropping after the Hart-Cellar Act passed in the 1960s). We had a second round of high-quality immigrants in the mid-90s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Most developing countries have a small proportion of their population that is exceptionally talented and intelligent (.1 to 1 percent). These are the innovators that pro-immigrant advocates point at as success stories. But just as the fizz bubbles immediately when a soda can is opened, these ultra-talented third worlders tended to be discovered quite quickly after immigration was liberalized. The next tier of immigrants exhibited a significant drop off in quality and the tiers after that have increasingly been the desperate low-skilled dregs of society (or scammers who game the immigration system) that are a net GDP per capita drain and have driven up rent prices while driving down working class wages. Americans are willing to do meatpacking and fruit picking if the wage is right. We should give them the chance by forcing employers to raise wages in response to immigration restrictions.
If my relatives had to pay such expensive fees I wouldn’t be here.