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Miami Herald
3 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Visitors to the U.S. on business and tourist visas may have to pay $15,000 bonds
Some international visitors to the United States might be required to pay up to $15,000 deposits as part of a new visa bond pilot program announced by the State Department this week in a document published in the Federal Register. The pilot program is another strategy the Trump administration is utilizing to crack down on illegal immigration and is meant to discourage the number of visitors who overstay their visas. The State Department said in the filing that those who overstay their visas pose a national security threat to the U.S. The program is being formed as part of the enforcement of a January executive order in which President Donald Trump declared there was an invasion by illegal immigration through U.S. borders. The consular officers in the respective U.S embassies will determine the amount of the bond during the issuance of the visa. Travelers will have to post the assigned bond amount before they are issued a single-entry visa, which will be valid for three months. Travelers with visa bonds would also be limited to traveling in and out of pre-selected airports. The list of airports has yet to be announced. The administration said 500,000 people overstayed their visas in 2023, based on data from the Department of Homeland Security. The pilot bond program will focus on those countries that the administration has identified as having high visa overstays. The program is limited to only B-1 business and B-2 tourist visas. It does not affect students applying for F-1 student visas. The full list of countries has yet to be announced. A State Department spokesperson said business and tourist visitors from Malawi and Zambia who are eligible for the B-1/B-2 visas will have to post bonds starting Aug. 20. According to Homeland Security's 2023 fiscal year visa overstay data, Malawi had a total visa overstay rate of 14% from 1,655 visitors, and Zambia had 11% from 3,493 visitors. The complete list of countries will be published when the program takes effect. This new program comes as South Florida airports saw a decline in the number of domestic and international travellers compared to the previous year. Dan Linblade, the president and CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than 1,250 companies, said in a statement that international business and tourism were vital to the economy and the new bond pilot program is a 'disincentive to travel from abroad.' 'We are concerned of the potential negative impact on international tourism at a time when we see declining numbers related to foreign travel,' said Lindblade. 'If the State Department's focus is only targeted to bad players then the impact will be smaller.' The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, which covers the Sixth District of the Federal Reserve, including Florida, reported in July that group bookings from international travel to the U.S from Canada, Asia, and Europe continued to slow, but there was some growth in overall travel and tourism. In the filing this week, the Department of State said that after reviewing reports going back as far as 2000, when the Immigration and Naturalization Service Data Management Improvement Act was introduced, the reports of entry and exits of nonimmigrant visa holders to the U.S. who overstayed their visas show that thousands of visitors failed to depart by their visa terms. The first Trump administration had tried to initiate a six-month visa-bond pilot program in November 2020. The program was to 'serve as a diplomatic tool to encourage foreign governments to take all appropriate actions to ensure their nationals timely depart the United States after making temporary visits.' It was to run from December 2020 through June 2021. The State Department scrapped the pilot program due to the reduction of global travel because of COVID-19. 'Data collected during the Pilot may also be used to determine the effectiveness of visa bonds at reducing overstays, evaluate concerns about insufficient identity verification, and the extent to which visa bonds may deter otherwise legitimate B-1 and B-2 visa applicants from traveling to the United States,' the State Department said. The bond program will run until August 2026, and the countries on the list will continually be updated over the year. Visitors with bonds will have to file for a refund within 30 days of their departure from the United States. Failure to do so results risks forfeiting the deposits.
Fast Company
3 minutes ago
- Fast Company
Hulu's days are numbered, and Disney just made it official
Mickey Mouse and Love Island will soon live under the same roof. The Walt Disney Company announced Wednesday plans to sunset standalone Hulu streaming app to integrate its content to the entertainment company's flagship app Disney+. News of the integration came during Disney's third quarterly earnings report and is part of the company's ongoing focus on streaming entertainment, including an upcoming Aug. 21 release of an ESPN streaming service. 'The company is taking major steps forward in streaming with the upcoming launch of ESPN's direct-to-consumer service, our just-announced plans with the NFL, and our forthcoming integration of Hulu into Disney+, creating a truly differentiated streaming proposition that harnesses the highest-caliber brands and franchises, general entertainment, family programming, news, and industry-leading sports content,' Disney CEO Bob Iger said in the report. While Hulu isn't disappearing as a brand, its set to fold into the existing platform. This quarter, Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions grew to 183 million, up by 2.4 million from the previous quarter. Despite growth in subscriptions, and beating earning projections, the entertainment giant's stock was down 2% at the time of publishing. Closing out a decades-long effort Hulu was initially founded in 2007 as a joint venture between 21st Century Fox (then News Corporation) and NBC Universal, with The Walt Disney Company and others later joining as stakeholders. Disney acquired 21st Century Fox's entertainment assets in 2019, giving the company controlling interest of the streaming platform ahead of of Disney+'s debut. Since, Disney has tried to acquire the remaining 33% of stakes in Hulu owned by Comcast (which bought NBC Universal). In June this year, both companies reached an agreement, with Disney set to pay $439 million to take full control of the platform. A Hulu integration unto the existing app had already been teased back in 2023, when Disney rolled out a beta version featuring Hulu's content inside the Disney+ app. Goodbye'Star+,' hello new homepage Users outside of the US might already be familiar with Hulu's programming available on the Disney+ app, under the tile dubbed 'Star+.' Until last year, Star+ served Latin America with its standalone app and platform featuring shows from FX, ABC, Hulu originals, and more. The standalone app folded into Disney+ last july, integrating as a tile within the app. Starting in the fall, the Star tile will now be replaced in Disney's international markets by Hulu's logo. Additionally, imporvements to the existing app are underway, the company revealed during their earnings call. 'Over the coming months, we will be implementing improvements within the Disney+ app, including exciting new features and a more personalized homepage,' Iger said. 'All of which will culminate with the unified Disney+ and Hulu streaming app experience that will be available to consumers next year.'
Fast Company
3 minutes ago
- Fast Company
The real meaning behind that viral Department of Homeland Security painting
In recent months, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has used its social media platforms to promote its vision of an ideal country. In between posts celebrating mass deportations and defending ICE, the department has taken on the role of curator, posting a series of artworks that appear to communicate an idealized, Eurocentric concept of the American dream. The department's artistic choices haven't been subtle, but none can compare to the overt messaging of its most recent art choice. On July 23, DHS posted a painting titled American Progress, alongside the caption, 'A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.' The 1873 painting by John Gast shows a group of white pioneers traveling west, forcing a group of Indigenous people out of frame. The irony of the DHS' post and caption, according to Martha Sandweiss, Princeton professor and historian of the U.S., is that American Progress does not show Americans 'defending' a homeland: 'What we actually see here are American settlers invading a homeland,' Sandweiss says. 'Of course, that's the homeland of the Native people that we see fleeing into the darkness, and, metaphorically, into extinction.' Gast's painting has long been used as an embodiment of the concept of ' Manifest Destiny,' a belief held by many during the nineteenth century (and beyond) that the United States was destined by divine right to control the entire territory from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. For decades, this dogma was used to explain and legitimize the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. The DHS's choice to highlight American Progress shows that its art choices have become an intentionally provocative flashpoint in an ideologically divided United States. And, Sandweiss says, it represents a whitewashing of the past that might signal a desire to exclude non-white Americans in the present. The fraught history of John Gast's 'American Progress' Gast's work on American Progress began in 1872, when he was commissioned to make a work for George Crofutt, an American publisher of several different guides promoting westward expansion. The image shows settlers traveling by stagecoach, conestoga wagon, and railroads, guided by a giant allegorical female figure of America, who holds a schoolbook in one hand and places a telegraph wire in the other. While these figures are glowing in a bright light, the fleeing Indigenous people are shrouded in darkness. 'On the one hand, [Crofutt] needs a set of ideas that his readers will readily respond to and are, in a sense, already familiar with,' Sandweiss says. 'In addition, he's using the picture as a kind of propaganda. He's picturing an imaginary scene that he hopes will resonate with people who might want to buy his travel guides and travel west themselves.' American Progress ultimately appeared in the monthly publication Crofutt's Western World. The image's description, as written by Crofutt, is full of racist tropes that align with the Manifest Destiny ideal of bringing 'civilization' to an 'uncivilized' place and people. 'This rich and wonderful country—the progress of which at the present time, is the wonder of the old world—was, until recently, inhabited exclusively by the [lurking] savage and wild beasts of prey,' Crofutt writes. Crofutt goes on to describe how the painting associates American settlers with the transformative power of technology, like transcontinental rail lines, trans-Atlantic trade (pictured in the top right of the image), and new telegraph wires. On her head, the symbolic female figure of America wears what Crofutt calls the 'Star of Empire.' In contrast, he writes, the lefthand side of the image 'declares darkness, waste and confusion.' The Indigenous people in the image are visually grouped with fleeing wild animals like a herd of bison and a black bear, all shown, per Crofutt, 'as they flee from the presence of the wondrous vision.' 'It doesn't reflect reality in any way' According to Sandweiss, it's no coincidence that American Progress shows trains in conjunction with the displacement of Native peoples. By 1872, it had been three years since the completion of the first transcontinental rail line, and several other lines were already underway. In the coming decades, Indigenous people would be forcibly located away from these routes. advertisement 'Absolutely, when the large reservations were created in the late 1860s, it was in part to move Native peoples away from the prospective railway lines so that they would not pose a threat to either the railroad companies or the settlers that the railroads would bring west,' Sandweiss explains. American Progress, Sandweiss says, is an idealized version of the American settler story. Encoded in the image is the idea that white Europeans were the sole people living in the American West, while, in actuality, the region was primarily settled by people of Spanish origin who arrived from Mexico. 'It doesn't reflect reality in any way,' she says. 'It doesn't reflect the multiple sources from which non-Native people came into the West. It doesn't depict the more complex racial identity of people who came into the West, which, by 1872 is including more free people, is including people coming north from Mexico, and it doesn't convey the role of women and families in the settlement of the Western landscape.' The press office of California Governor Gavin Newsom also reposted the painting with the response, 'This painting is housed at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. The museum heavily features Native American history and intentionally embraces a more honest, inclusive understanding of Western history—a concept the Trump administration fails to understand.' This painting is housed at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. The museum heavily features Native American history and intentionally embraces a more honest, inclusive understanding of Western history — a concept the Trump administration fails to understand. — Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) July 23, 2025 Whitewashing of the past leads to whitewashing of the present Many American schoolchildren will be familiar with American Progress because, for decades, textbooks have used it as a visual explanation of the Manifest Destiny concept. The image's themes of divine conquering, the spread of technology, the superiority of European settlers, and patriarchal structure capture the complex dynamics at play within this belief system. For the DHS to post this painting through an uncritical lens, Sandweiss says, signals 'a broader ignorance of American history on the part of the current administration'; an ignorance that she sees reflected in the administration's efforts to alter the historical information shared by agencies like the Smithsonian and the National Park Service. 'If you overly simplify the past—if you pretend that the only important people in the story were white men—you not only distort the past and dishonor the many other kinds of people who were part of American society at that moment, you also suggest that there's not a space for different kinds of people in the present,' Sandweiss says. 'Whitewashing the past makes it easier to whitewash the present, and pretend that people who are not like the people we see in this painting have never had a part in the American nation.' The early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, September 5, at 11:59 p.m. PT. 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