Trump administration to end visa-free visits for Chinese nationals to Northern Mariana Islands

The Department of Homeland Security is suspending the program that allowed Chinese nationals to visit the Northern Mariana Islands without a visa, ending a travel route used by more than 3,000 Chinese nationals in fiscal year 2025. The notice sets the suspension for 2 p.m. EDT on October 30, three days after publication in the Federal Register.

Visitors already in the islands may complete their approved stays, but future trips will require visas unless another legal exception applies. The affected scheme, the Economic Vitality and Security Travel Authorization Program, authorized approved visitors to stay for up to 14 days for business or pleasure.

The Department of Homeland Security’s notice applies to new applicants as well as people who already held approval. Its timing means the change will affect both prospective travel and repeat visits, while not cutting short stays already approved.

The department’s security rationale includes a case involving a Chinese national sentenced for helping smuggle seven Chinese nationals from the Northern Mariana Islands to Guam. The department said most of those people were later found in or near sensitive military sites.

SocialNews.XYZ also reported that the department cited espionage near U.S. military bases and illegal onward travel to Guam, alongside birth tourism; those are stated grounds for the action, not findings that every program user engaged in such conduct.

The screening process was another point in the department’s account: Customs and Border Protection handled applications rather than a State Department consular officer. That distinction helps explain the administration’s focus on suspending the program itself and requiring visas for future visits.

The sources describe the program as allowing prescreened travel, but provide no account from Chinese travelers or a Chinese government response. The New York Post emphasized birth-tourism and security concerns and reported that four Republican senators—Mike Lee, Rick Scott, John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy—had pressed Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to end the program.

SocialNews.XYZ likewise listed birth tourism among the administration’s stated concerns, while also detailing espionage and travel to Guam. The outlets thus describe overlapping rationales, with the New York Post foregrounding the senators’ political pressure and SocialNews.XYZ spelling out the alleged security risks.

The program allowed visits for a maximum of 14 days, and more than 3,000 Chinese nationals used it during fiscal year 2025. That volume gives the policy change a concrete reach: travelers who would otherwise have applied through the program must now seek visas for future visits, subject to other legal exceptions.

The sources do not quantify how many future travelers will seek visas or how many will qualify. The next defined step is implementation under the Federal Register notice: the suspension begins at the specified time on October 30.

The immediate distinction is between visitors already lawfully present, who may finish approved stays, and those planning later trips, who face the visa requirement unless an exception applies.