State Department orders consular officers to deny visas to applicants who fear returning home

On April 28, 2026, the U.S. Department of State transmitted a worldwide diplomatic cable instructing consular officers to ask every nonimmigrant visa applicant two new questions during their interview: "Have you experienced harm or mistreatment in your country of nationality or last habitual residence?" and "Do you fear harm or mistreatment in returning to your country of nationality or permanent residence?" Under the directive, an applicant must answer "no" to both questions verbally for the officer to proceed with issuing the visa; an affirmative answer to either question -- or a refusal to answer -- requires the officer to refuse the visa. The questions do not appear on the DS-160 application form and must be posed orally at the consular window. The rule applies across nonimmigrant categories, including tourist, student, and temporary-worker visas, and was first reported by The Washington Post and independently confirmed by CNN, both of which reviewed the cable.

The cable frames the measure as fraud prevention, stating that consular officers "must prevent abuse of the immigration system by visa applicants who misrepresent their purpose of travel, including those who attempt to obtain nonimmigrant visas for the purpose of claiming asylum upon arrival." Practitioners reading the directive note that it operationalizes the refusal through INA section 214(b), the provision that presumes nonimmigrant applicants to be intending immigrants unless they prove otherwise. Because asylum can be sought only by a person already physically present in the United States, the policy works upstream of that statutory protection: it screens out, at consular posts abroad and out of public view, applicants whose answers suggest they might later invoke it.

The Standing records the directive as a discriminatory policy that disadvantages a vulnerable class -- people who have experienced or fear persecution -- by converting their protection-need into an automatic ground for visa denial, and as government action targeting a marginalized community at the point of visa issuance. It also reads as executive overreach: by using broad consular discretion under section 214(b) to foreclose access to the asylum framework Congress established in the Refugee Act, the administration narrows a statutory protection through internal guidance rather than legislation or public rulemaking. The action fits a documented 2026 pattern of administrative measures curtailing asylum access at successive procedural chokepoints.