TRAVEL restrictions imposed by the United States against Tonga and 29 other countries began on January 1.
Under the new country-specific restrictions, visas for short-term visits, tourism and business purposes have been suspended.
Entry to the US for Tongans and restricted countries have been severely limited.
The new guidelines follow the enforcement of Presidential Proclamation 10998 by US President Donald Trump to “protect the security of the United States”.
Tonga is on a list of 15 countries from which the US has partially restricted and limited the entry of nationals. The countries are: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Cote d ‘Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Tonga has been cited as having a high overstaying rate in the US. An estimated 78,000 Tongans live in the US. Most Tongan Americans have non-citizen parents.
The White House estimates that up to 14.4 per cent of Tongans who visit the US to study overstay their visas.
The US State Department has said the decision to restrict travel was based on “a comprehensive interagency review…assessing governments’ ability to reliably identify and document their nationals, share criminal and security information, prevent fraud, and address risks such as corruption, instability, terrorist and transnational criminal activity, misuse of citizenship-by-investment programs, and high visa overstay rates.”
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in an interview on Fox News defended the updated travel restrictions.
“If they don’t have a stable government there,” she said.
“If they don’t have a country that can sustain itself and tell us who those individuals are and help us vet them, why should we allow people from that country to come here to the United States?”