From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 15, no. 3, September 2000.

Australia has further tightened its immigration policy for “high risk countries”, including Tonga.

Under a new sponsored visitor visa policy, which came into force in August, with very few exceptions, most Tongans who apply for a visitor’s visa to Australia must have a member of his or her family, as an Australian citizen, as a sponsor. But if the Australian immigration authority still has some doubt that the visitor may run away in Australia, they can demand that the sponsor pay a Security Bond, ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 per visitor.

Tonga, according to Bruce Mackay, the Australian Regional Director for the South Pacific Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs is the ‘bad boy’ among all the countries in the world with illegal immigrants living in Australia. There are 1,400 illegal Tongan immigrants in Australia, small in comparison with the thousands of illegal immigrants from other European countries, but in proportion to the total population of the country, Australia considers Tonga to be the worst offender.

Bruce said that 15% of all Tongans who visited Australia on a visitor’s visa, break the law by either staying in Australia longer than their visa allowed or by working illegally.

Refused Visitors

Bruce said in Nuku’alofa on August 18 that the new sponsored visitor’s visa policy should not be looked upon as a restriction but as another avenue to try if an application for a normal visitor’s visa to Australia was turned down.

Bruce said the Australian government was concerned because they still had a high unemployment figure of 6%, and therefore they wanted only skilled people to come to Australia. He said that there were already enough unskilled people in Australia to do Australia’s unskilled jobs.

Australia’s concern is to stop unskilled people from living and working illegally in Australia. Bruce claimed that it was costing his government $50,000 to deport each illegal immigrant back to where he or she came from.