> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Antigua Pays a US$20,000 Visa Bond at a 1.30 Per Cent Overstay Rate. St Kitts Does Not, at 1.31. - URL: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/us-visa-bond-caribbean-overstay-rates-cbi-designations-2026/ - Published: 2026-08-15T00:59:30.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-15T02:43:17.000Z - Description: Washington made its visa bond permanent on 3 August, covering Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada and Cuba. The Department of Homeland Security overstay table does not sort the region the way the designations do. - Author: Theon Alleyne - Tags: Compliance, caribbean, trade, Analysis **Quick summary:** The United States made its visa bond permanent on 3 August 2026, demanding up to US$20,000 from visitor visa applicants in fifty countries, four of them Caribbean. The rule names overstay rates as its first criterion. On Homeland Security's own table Antigua and Barbuda is bonded at 1.30 per cent and Saint Kitts is not, at 1.31. By La Caribeña News · 14 August 2026 Antigua and Barbuda has been under a United States visa bond since 6 January. Saint Kitts and Nevis has not. On the Department of Homeland Security's most recent count, Antiguan business and pleasure visitors overstayed at **1.30 per cent** and Kittitian visitors at **1.31 per cent**. The two figures are one hundredth of a percentage point apart, and the higher of them belongs to the country that pays nothing. The Department of State made the bond permanent in [a final rule published on **3 August 2026**](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/03/2026-15726/visas-visa-bond-program?ref=lacaribenanews.com), converting [a pilot](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/05/2025-14826/visas-visa-bond-pilot-program?ref=lacaribenanews.com) that had run since August 2025\. Fifty countries are covered. Four are in this region: **Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Cuba from 6 January, and Grenada from 2 April**. ## What does the bond require? Cash, in dollars, before the visa is issued. A covered applicant for a B-1 or B-2 visitor visa must post a bond of **US$10,000, US$15,000 or US$20,000**, the amount set by the consular officer on the applicant's circumstances unless it is waived. The pilot ran at US$5,000 to US$15,000, so the permanent rule raised both the floor and the ceiling. From 1 October 2027 the maximum adjusts for inflation every seven years against the consumer price index, rounded up to the nearest thousand. The money is posted electronically through a Treasury payment platform, in United States currency, with the applicant carrying any exchange costs and any limits their own country's payment rules impose. **The travel conditions are stricter than the money.** A bonded traveller must arrive in and depart from the United States **by commercial air**, through a United States port of entry or a Customs and Border Protection preclearance location. Charter aviation, general aviation, land borders and seaports are excluded. In a region that moves by ferry, by cruise and, between Guyana and Suriname, across a river, that closes routes the fee alone does not. Access of this kind has already been [reshaping what a Caribbean passport is worth](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/guyana-passport-visa-free-countries-2026/). ## Where is the list of covered countries written? Not in the rule, and not in any instrument. The final rule names no country at all. Neither did the pilot. Both provide that the Department announces covered countries on its own website "no fewer than 15 days before the Program takes effect", that the list "may be amended on a rolling basis", and that additions take fifteen days while **removals take effect immediately**. So a country is placed under a US$20,000 bond by publication on a webpage rather than by regulation, without notice and comment, and can be released the same way. The pilot rule also provides that in announcing the covered countries the Department "will also provide a brief explanation of the basis for requiring bonds consistent with this rule". A stated basis therefore exists for each country. ## Does the overstay table support the designations? Not in this region. The rule's first criterion is the overstay rate, and it names its source: [the Entry/Exit Overstay Report](https://www.dhs.gov/publication/entryexit-overstay-report?ref=lacaribenanews.com) that Homeland Security produces each year. The most recent covers the 2024 fiscal year. Its Table 3 measures business and pleasure visitors from countries outside the Visa Waiver Program, and it computes its own benchmark. Across that whole population of 12.1 million expected departures, the total overstay rate is **2.33 per cent**. | Country | Overstay rate | Visa bond | | -------------------------------- | ------------- | --------- | | Suriname | 31.14% | no | | Haiti | 24.84% | no | | **Cuba** | **6.96%** | **yes** | | **Dominica** | **4.29%** | **yes** | | Guyana | 4.00% | no | | Jamaica | 3.43% | no | | Belize | 3.13% | no | | **Vanuatu** | **3.05%** | **yes** | | Dominican Republic | 3.01% | no | | Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 2.44% | no | | *Non-waiver average* | *2.33%* | | | **Grenada** | **1.77%** | **yes** | | Saint Lucia | 1.63% | no | | Saint Kitts and Nevis | 1.31% | no | | **Antigua and Barbuda** | **1.30%** | **yes** | | Bahamas | 0.89% | no | | Trinidad and Tobago | 0.62% | no | | Barbados | 0.50% | no | Antigua and Grenada both sit **below** the average the report calculates. Antigua's rate is the fourth lowest in the hemisphere on that table. Guyana overstays at **4.00 per cent** and carries no bond, at more than double Grenada's rate. Jamaica at 3.43, Belize at 3.13, the Dominican Republic at 3.01 and Saint Vincent at 2.44 all exceed the non-waiver average, and none of the four is covered. The two highest rates in the hemisphere, **Suriname at 31.14 per cent and Haiti at 24.84**, are outside the programme entirely. Of the four Caribbean states that do pay, only Cuba and Dominica are above the average at all. ## What does sort the list? The sale of citizenship, and the rules say so. Six states in this set sell citizenship or have recently sold it. Four of them are bonded: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada and Vanuatu. Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia are not. The criteria in the permanent rule run to overstay rates, deficient information sharing, insufficient identity verification and criminal records, and countries needing improvement in screening and vetting and in "the security of travel and civil documents, **including in the granting of citizenship**". The pilot rule was blunter. It provided for bonds where screening and vetting information is deemed deficient "or, Citizenship by Investment (\`CBI'), if the alien obtained citizenship with no residency requirement". That ground had already been used elsewhere. [**Proclamation 10998**](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/19/2025-23570/restricting-and-limiting-the-entry-of-foreign-nationals-to-protect-the-security-of-the-united-states?ref=lacaribenanews.com), signed 16 December 2025 and effective on New Year's Day, suspended immigrant entry and B-1, B-2, F, M and J visas for fifteen countries. For thirteen the recited ground is an overstay rate. For Antigua and Barbuda and for Dominica the entire ground is one sentence, that the country **has historically had citizenship by investment without residency**. Those two are the only states in the instrument restricted on the sale of citizenship alone. The proclamation sets out the logic: a national of a restricted country buys citizenship from an unrestricted one, obtains that passport, and applies for a United States visa on it. Washington created its own route to American status for a payment three months before signing that proclamation, and [no European Union state has sold citizenship since April 2025](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/europe-stopped-selling-citizenship-us-gold-card-investor-migration-2026/). ## What is the bond actually for? Leverage, on the rule's own account. The Department invoked the foreign affairs function to publish without notice and comment, and explained why. The bonds are "a diplomatic tool to encourage foreign governments to take immediate action", and the programme is "a fundamental tool of diplomacy and national security, serving as a primary mechanism to manage bilateral relations and incentivize foreign governments" to cooperate on departures and information sharing. On results, the rule says only that countries subject to the pilot "significantly reduced the number of their visa overstays". It attaches no figure to that. ## What has Saint Kitts done? More than any of the four that pay. The state nobody has bonded is the one that enforced. Saint Kitts and Nevis reviewed 158 applications, recovered shortfalls from 32, and **revoked thirteen citizenships** under a deprivation order made in 2025 for payment below the statutory minimum. It blacklisted the agent RIF Trust, terminated its agreements with MSR Media, and publishes the only live named-agent penalty register in the region. It also prices highest of the five. Dominica gazetted **68 revocations** on 6 June 2024, for grants made between 2020 and 2022 on fraud and false representation. The five governments agreed a price floor by memorandum on 20 March 2024, setting a minimum of US$200,000 from 1 July that year, with the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States stating that discounting the agreed minimum is illegal. Antigua's own signed six-monthly returns record National Development Fund receipts of **US$100,000 and US$125,000 up to 30 June 2024**, the last day before the floor took effect. It stopped publishing those returns thereafter. Saint Kitts cut its family-of-four option from US$350,000 to US$250,000 in July 2024, three weeks after the floor. A Dominican hotelier, Gregor Nassief, has spent seven years and fourteen letters telling his own government that [citizenship was being sold below the price the law sets](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/dominica-cbi-discounting-nassief-inquiry-demand-2026/). What replaces the revenue is unresolved, and Dominica has begun [building an agency around its creative sector](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/dominica-creative-economy-agency-guyana-orange-economy-2026/). ## Where does the rest of the pressure sit? With three powers, on three different lists. The **United Kingdom** removed visa-free access from Dominican nationals through a statement of changes laid on 19 July 2023 and in force at three o'clock the same afternoon, a deliberate departure from the usual notice. The then Home Secretary's stated ground was clear and evident abuse of the citizenship programme, including citizenship granted to people known to pose a risk to the United Kingdom. Saint Lucia has since joined Dominica as a visa national. Antigua, Grenada and Saint Kitts retain electronic travel authorisation. The **European Union** has restricted none of them. It has built the instrument and set a date. [A regulation in force since 30 December 2025](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2025/2441/oj?ref=lacaribenanews.com) makes the operation of an investor citizenship scheme, granting citizenship for predetermined payments without a genuine link, a ground in itself for suspending visa-free access. On 25 June the Commissioner for Home Affairs wrote to the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda asking the country to phase its programme out by **1 June 2028**, with a twenty-four month transition and reinforced vetting in place by September 2026, according to the Antiguan Office of the Prime Minister, which published the request. The Commission has not published the letters. The **United States** has done all three things at once: the proclamation against two, bonds against four, and a separate pause on immigrant visa processing from 21 January 2026 covering seventy-five countries on public charge grounds, which reaches Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Belize and Saint Vincent. That pause was never published in the Federal Register. Set the three together and no two lists agree. Dominica is reached by all of them. Antigua is barred from the United States and welcome in Britain. Saint Lucia is a visa national in Britain and untouched by Washington. Grenada is bonded and nothing more. Saint Kitts, which revoked thirteen citizenships and blacklisted an agent, is on none of the three. ## What does it cost the region? The bond is a price on ordinary travel, paid by people who have nothing to do with a passport programme. A Grenadian buyer visiting a trade fair, a Dominican nurse at a conference, an Antiguan hotelier meeting an operator, each faces a demand for between US$10,000 and US$20,000 in United States currency, refundable only on a departure recorded by commercial air. The region's exporters are already working [trade agreements they cannot easily read](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/colombia-caricom-trade-agreement-industrial-tariffs-2026/) without adding a bond to the cost of attending the meeting. Washington has used [visa access against directors of a Caribbean-facing company before](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/huawei-visa-warning-calf-neuquen-caribbean-telecoms-boards-2026/), and the region has already been [counting what exclusion costs an open economy](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/guyana-open-economy-visa-exclusion-2026/). Gregor Nassief was elected president-elect of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association in May. His United States visa was not renewed weeks later. None of the five governments has published a costed plan for the revenue the programmes carry, and Brussels has set 2028\. Suriname's oil minister made the argument from the other side this month, warning about [an economy concentrated on a single revenue source](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/suriname-summit-duurzaam-3-0-oil-diversification-local-content-2026/). ### The data in this article - Visas: Visa Bond Program, final rule, 91 FR 48757, published 3 August 2026, converting the pilot at 90 FR 37378 of 5 August 2025. - Bond of US$10,000, US$15,000 or US$20,000, set by the consular officer unless waived; pilot range was US$5,000 to US$15,000\. Maximum adjusts for inflation from 1 October 2027 and every seven years thereafter on the consumer price index, rounded up to the nearest US$1,000. - Entry and exit by commercial air only, through a United States port of entry or a Customs and Border Protection preclearance location. Charter aviation, general aviation, land borders and seaports excluded. - Fifty countries covered. Antigua and Barbuda, Cuba and Dominica added 6 January 2026; Grenada added 2 April 2026; Vanuatu added 6 January 2026\. Neither rule names any country; the list is published on the Department's website with fifteen days' notice for additions and immediate effect for removals. - Criteria in the permanent rule: overstay rates, deficient information sharing, insufficient identity verification and criminal records, and countries needing improvement in screening and vetting and in "the security of travel and civil documents, including in the granting of citizenship". - Pilot rule ground, verbatim: bonds where screening and vetting information is deemed deficient "or, Citizenship by Investment (\`CBI'), if the alien obtained citizenship with no residency requirement". - Stated purpose: bonds are "a diplomatic tool to encourage foreign governments to take immediate action" and "a fundamental tool of diplomacy and national security". On results the rule states only that covered countries "significantly reduced the number of their visa overstays", with no figure. - Overstay rates, Department of Homeland Security Entry/Exit Overstay Report, fiscal year 2024, Table 3, business and pleasure visitors from non-waiver countries: Suriname 31.14, Haiti 24.84, Cuba 6.96, Dominica 4.29, Guyana 4.00, Jamaica 3.43, Belize 3.13, Vanuatu 3.05, Dominican Republic 3.01, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 2.44, Grenada 1.77, Saint Lucia 1.63, Saint Kitts and Nevis 1.31, Antigua and Barbuda 1.30, Bahamas 0.89, Trinidad and Tobago 0.62, Barbados 0.50 per cent. Non-waiver average 2.33 per cent across 12,131,255 expected departures and 283,121 overstays. - Proclamation 10998, 16 December 2025, 90 FR 59717, effective 1 January 2026: fifteen countries restricted, thirteen on overstay grounds. Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica are the only two whose recited ground is citizenship by investment without residency. - United Kingdom: statement of changes laid 19 July 2023, in force at 1500 the same day, on Dominica and Vanuatu, on grounds of clear and evident abuse. Saint Lucia has since joined the visa-national list. - European Union: regulation in force 30 December 2025 making the operation of an investor citizenship scheme a ground for suspending visa-free access; letter of 25 June 2026 seeking phase-out by 1 June 2028 with a twenty-four month transition, per the Antiguan Office of the Prime Minister. - United States immigrant visa pause from 21 January 2026 covering seventy-five countries on public charge grounds, including Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Belize and Saint Vincent. Not published in the Federal Register. - Enforcement: Saint Kitts and Nevis reviewed 158 applications, recovered shortfalls from 32, revoked 13 citizenships under a 2025 deprivation order, blacklisted RIF Trust and terminated agreements with MSR Media. Dominica gazetted 68 revocations on 6 June 2024. - Price floor: memorandum of 20 March 2024, US$200,000 minimum from 1 July 2024\. Antigua's signed six-monthly returns record National Development Fund receipts at US$100,000 and US$125,000 up to 30 June 2024\. Saint Kitts reduced its family-of-four option from US$350,000 to US$250,000 in July 2024. ## Frequently Asked Questions **Which Caribbean countries are subject to the United States visa bond?** Antigua and Barbuda, Cuba and Dominica since 6 January 2026, and Grenada since 2 April 2026\. They are four of fifty countries covered. Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Belize, the Bahamas, Suriname and Haiti are not covered. **How much is the bond and who decides the amount?** US$10,000, US$15,000 or US$20,000, set by the consular officer on the applicant's individual circumstances unless waived. It is posted electronically in United States dollars through a Treasury platform before the visa is issued, and it is refundable on compliance. **Do overstay rates explain which countries were chosen?** Not in this region. Antigua and Barbuda overstays at 1.30 per cent and is bonded, while Saint Kitts and Nevis overstays at 1.31 per cent and is not. Both Antigua and Grenada sit below the 2.33 per cent average the Department of Homeland Security calculates for non-waiver countries, while Guyana at 4.00 per cent, Jamaica at 3.43 and Suriname at 31.14 are not covered. **Do the rules mention citizenship by investment?** Yes. The pilot rule provides for bonds where screening and vetting information is deficient or where the applicant obtained citizenship by investment with no residency requirement. The permanent rule lists the security of civil documents "including in the granting of citizenship" among its criteria. **Where is the list of covered countries published?** On the Department of State's website, not in any regulation. Neither the pilot nor the permanent rule names a single country. Additions take effect after fifteen days and removals take effect immediately. **What travel restrictions come with the bond?** A bonded traveller must arrive and depart by commercial air through a United States port of entry or a Customs and Border Protection preclearance location. Charter aviation, general aviation, land crossings and seaports cannot be used.