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Comment by joecool1029 | Hacker News Reader

Why Bhutan of all places?

Seems it's because out of the low hundreds people total who visited in a year and were expected to leave the US, some large percent didn't leave, joining the double-digit overstayers club. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/25_0912_cbp_...

Thanks for the link, to save anyone else the trouble, it seems that the rate for Bhutan is 89 out of 423 (21%) in country overstays. Average overstay rate for non visa waiver countries is 2.2%.

I don't think it was mentioned, but Bhutan minority groups have experienced ethnic cleansing and oppression; we used to accept their refugees, but now we probably don't, so it's likely that these overstays are actually people fleeing or related to those fleeing persecution. Another fun externality of politicians persecuting immigrants based on statistics.

Bhutan doesn’t have formal diplomatic relations with US. They’re the one of the two countries in Asia that doesn’t have a US embassy, the other being North Korea. (Not suggesting that they’re NK) It’s probably because they just don’t have relationship with the US.

bhutan has the lowest number of international relations

it appears that they intentionally avoid relationships with countries that could try to unduly influence them.

https://youtu.be/dA2laOQjZvQ

State Department was commanded to make a list of countries by visa overstay rate and all decisions made based on that sheet regardless of merit.

Just like tariffs were decided, and a bunch of microscopic pacific islands are being judged by trade deficits.

Visa overstay rate does at least relate to the issue at hand, because visa overstays are what they're trying to prevent. But trade deficits were never a good proxy.

It's just weird they were even on the radar. I guess I could see a blanket 'any country with over 10% overstaying, bond required'.

Otherwise can't think of any identity/tribal reason... maybe tobacco lobbyists requested since they tried to ban smoking?

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