US Visitors Could Be Required to Pay a $15,000 Bond
If that sounds like the bail bond system, it's because it is.
A new rule that could go into effect on December 30, 2020, will require some immigrants to post a bond before coming to the US on a visa, up to $15,000.
The idea behind this pilot program is that because some immigrants stay in the US longer than their visa allows, bonds could provide a financial incentive for people to leave the US.
If you think this sounds like the much-criticized bond economy surrounding jails and prisons, it’s because it is.
Technically speaking, I’m a political geographer. And although I don’t study prisons personally, some of my colleagues who do have talked about the “carceral state.” The carceral state is a concept that describes the way that certain technologies of incarceration and punishment are not limited to prisons themselves.
For instance, although about 20,000 immigrants are kept in detention facilities right now (this number fluctuates monthly), many thousands more are enrolled in what are called “alternatives to detention” programs that require them to live under constant surveillance through GPS ankle monitors, etc., even though they are not in detention centers per se. For immigrants, the carceral state manifests itself not only inside detention facilities but far outside of them as well.
What about visa “bonds”?
This is clearly another innovative extension of the carceral state. Bonds have long been used as collateral for the release of prisoners in America’s racist criminal justice system. Clearly this technology of using bonds as a coercive economic tool has undergone what is called “policy migration” to the visitor visa program.
The question of whether or not this new bond program will actually compel more immigrants to leave the US when their visa expires is of secondary concern. After all, one should question whether the problem is with individual immigrants’ choices, or with the systemic dysfunctions and injustices of the immigration system broadly.
More importantly, identifying the bond system as a tool of the carceral state is a first step to understanding how the carceral state has come to be so expansive and insidious in our everyday lives.
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