Britain demands cash bonds for high-risk visitor visas from 6 countries

What an excellent idea.

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Britain's Home Office confirmed Monday it will demand a 3,000-pound ($4,630) refundable bond for visas for "high-risk" visitors from six former colonies in Africa and Asia — a pilot scheme that has brought warnings at home and abroad that it will damage trade.

Britain said in a statement Monday that it will go ahead with the pilot scheme despite the outrage, charges of discrimination and warnings of retaliation. [...]

For now, the targeted countries are Nigeria, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Government data shows citizens of those countries applied for more than half a million visas to Britain last year.

And what do you know!

Khaled Mahmud, owner of a Bangladeshi travel agency in Dhaka that deals with British student visas, charged the scheme was racist. "It smacks of a deep-rooted racial attitude," he told The Associated Press on Monday. [...]

Nigeria's government made a formal demand last month that Britain renounce the proposal. Foreign Affairs Minister Olugbenga Ashiru called in the British high commissioner to express "the strong displeasure of the government and people of Nigeria" over the "discriminatory" policy.