Foreign ticket holders from World Cup qualifying countries won’t have to pay bonds to enter US

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is sus­pend­ing a re­quire­ment that for­eign vis­i­tors from coun­tries that have qual­i­fied for the World Cup and have bought tick­ets for the soc­cer tour­na­ment pay as much as $15,000 in bonds to en­ter the Unit­ed States, the State De­part­ment said Wednes­day.

The de­part­ment im­posed the bond re­quire­ment last year for coun­tries that it said had high rates of peo­ple over­stay­ing their visas and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty is­sues as part of the Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion’s broad­er crack­down on im­mi­gra­tion.

Trav­el­ers to the Unit­ed States from 50 coun­tries are re­quired to pay the new bond, and five of those coun­tries have qual­i­fied for the World Cup — Al­ge­ria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Sene­gal and Tunisia.

Cit­i­zens from those five coun­tries who have pur­chased tick­ets from FI­FA are now ex­empt from the visa bond re­quire­ment. World Cup team play­ers, coach­es and some staff al­ready had been ex­empt from the bond re­quire­ment as part of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s or­ders to pri­or­i­tize the pro­cess­ing of visas for the tour­na­ment.

“The Unit­ed States is ex­cit­ed to or­ga­nize the biggest and best FI­FA World Cup in his­to­ry,” As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Con­sular Af­fairs Mo­ra Nam­dar said. “We are waiv­ing visa bonds for qual­i­fied fans who bought World Cup tick­ets” and opt­ed in to the FI­FA Pass sys­tem that al­lows ex­pe­dit­ed visa ap­point­ments as of April 15.

The waiv­er is a rare loos­en­ing of im­mi­gra­tion re­quire­ments un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tion and will ease trav­el bur­dens for at least some vis­i­tors to the U.S. for the World Cup, which be­gins June 11 and is co-host­ed by the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion has tak­en dra­mat­ic steps to re­strict im­mi­gra­tion in ways that crit­ics say are in­con­gru­ous with the type of uni­fy­ing mes­sage that a glob­al sport­ing event such as the World Cup is sup­posed to project.

For in­stance, the ad­min­is­tra­tion has barred trav­ellers from Iran and Haiti, though World Cup play­ers, coach­es and oth­er sup­port per­son­nel are ex­empt. Trav­el­ers from Ivory Coast and Sene­gal, face par­tial re­stric­tions un­der an ex­pand­ed ver­sion of that trav­el ban, even with­out the visa bond ex­emp­tion.

For­eign trav­ellers al­so had faced po­ten­tial new re­quire­ments to sub­mit their so­cial me­dia his­to­ries, al­though that pol­i­cy from U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion had not gone in­to ef­fect. Al­so, the ad­min­is­tra­tion had de­ployed U.S. Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment agents at air­ports re­cent­ly when Trans­porta­tion Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion per­son­nel were not be­ing paid dur­ing a par­tial fed­er­al shut­down.

Those mea­sures prompt­ed Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al and dozens of U.S. civ­il and hu­man rights groups to is­sue a “World Cup trav­el ad­vi­so­ry” that warns trav­ellers about the cli­mate in the U.S.

In a re­port this month, the main ad­vo­ca­cy group for U.S. ho­tels blamed visa bar­ri­ers and oth­er geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues for “sig­nif­i­cant­ly sup­press­ing in­ter­na­tion­al de­mand,” lead­ing to ho­tel book­ings for the soc­cer tour­na­ment that are far be­low what had ini­tial­ly been an­tic­i­pat­ed.

The Amer­i­can Ho­tel & Lodg­ing As­so­ci­a­tion said trav­ellers are con­cerned about po­ten­tial­ly lengthy visa wait times and in­creased fees, along with un­cer­tain­ty about how they’re be­ing processed to en­ter the U.S.

The bond re­quire­ments are part of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s larg­er ef­fort to clamp down on mi­grants who trav­el to the U.S. on tem­po­rary visas but then over­stay them. Visa ap­pli­cants from the af­fect­ed coun­tries are re­quired to pay $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 in bonds, which will be re­fund­ed if the trav­eller com­plies with the terms of the visa or if the visa ap­pli­ca­tion is de­nied.

As of ear­ly April, the num­ber of World Cup fans af­fect­ed by the bond re­quire­ment was be­lieved to be rel­a­tive­ly small, per­haps on­ly about 250 peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to U.S. of­fi­cials who were not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. But they said that num­ber was chang­ing rapid­ly as more peo­ple buy tick­ets and some with tick­ets opt against trav­el­ing.

FI­FA had re­quest­ed the waiv­er, which had to be ap­proved by the State De­part­ment and De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, and was the top­ic of dis­cus­sion at mul­ti­ple meet­ings at the White House and else­where in Wash­ing­ton for sev­er­al months, the of­fi­cials said. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by SE­UNG MIN KIM and MATTHEW LEE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press