The State Department is considering requiring some green card applicants to hand over thousands of dollars in the Trump administration’s latest bid to ensure new arrivals to the US can support themselves.
Some officials have floated making would-be legal permanent residents submit a $100,000 bond if applying at a US consulate overseas, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Others said the deposit amount could fluctuate depending on individual cases.
Green card holders would likely be repaid upon becoming US citizens, a process that takes at least five years.
“President Trump has made clear that those who wish to immigrate to the United States must be financially self-sufficient,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told the Journal, confirming that the administration was exploring ways under existing law to require the bond, which could also be posted by a green card applicant’s relatives.
The proposed bond requirement would expand on a pilot program for tourist visas that has been in effect since August 2025. Initially, applicants from the African nations of Malawi and Zambia were required to post a refundable bond of up to $15,000, forfeited if they overstayed the visa or applied for another immigration status, such as asylum, after arriving.
The program has since expanded to 50 countries, more than half of which are in Africa.
Immigration advocates, like Sharvari Dalal-Dheini of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, accused the Trump administration of instituting a “pay-for-play” system.
“The goal of bonds is, it seems, to keep out a certain type of immigrant,” Dalal-Dheini told the Journal. “Only the wealthy can come visit, or reunite with family, or seek a better life for themselves.”
The WSJ report emerged hours after the Trump administration revived the so-called “public charge” rule, which could deny green cards to immigrants who use public benefits such as food stamps, Medicaid, and housing vouchers.
Under the rule, green card applicants must show they won’t be taxpayer burdens, or “public charges.”
“We are reaffirming the requirement of self-reliance, protecting public resources, and ending policies that encouraged dependency on hard-working American taxpayers,” the Department of Homeland Security said in an X post Thursday morning.
The public charge rule was first implemented in February 2020, during Trump’s first term, but was scrapped by former President Joe Biden.
