The visa bond program for the United States started impacting Mongolia in April 2026. This program requires B1/2 visa applicants to post a bond of $10,000-$20,000 dollars and limits visa terms from three months to a year. This was a pilot program, and it was just made permanent.
It’s annoying for us, to say the least. At least for now, when my wife’s 10 year visa expires, she will need to go through this process. Since she was 18 or 19 she has gone to the US many, many times. In fact she lived there for 8 years, which is when I met her. We were even married there.
We go to the US to visit family, and to do business, every year. One of the largest jewelry trade shows in the US is in Las Vegas each year and she attends. In fact most of the purchases for her jewelry business in Mongolia come from US suppliers.
I understand the State Department’s reasoning for this decision. I’d argue that this program, as it is currently structured, will probably cost the State Department more money. For all those thousands of Mongolians who travel to the US regularly, and who don’t break the rules, they will now have to go to the US Embassy in Ulaanbaatar once a year (in the best case) and do a visa interview. It is going to overload the already stressed system they have.
It would make much more sense to be able to waive this program for those with a long and obviously strong visa history.
Back in 2015 when my wife and I were married, she had to get a visa to go to the US. We made no secret of the plan to get married in Texas, and we planned to go on our honeymoon and then come right back to Mongolia. The consular officer basically said that she wasn’t allowed to get married in the US, which isn’t correct for obvious reasons. But the reason they said this is because once you are married to a US citizen and in the US you can file for an adjustment of status and then stay. That wasn’t our intention of course, but for a consular officer it’s certainly a bit of a weird thing to hear from a visa applicant in a country where most people would love to immigrate to the US.
Anyways, I tell this story to point out that my wife has had ample opportunity over the past 20 years to immigrate legally. She didn’t. So this program makes little sense other than to create more hassle for us and the consular officers at the embassy.
Funny enough, all immigrant visa issuance from Mongolia are paused anyways. So even if we wanted to move our family to the US we couldn’t…
