Thousands of Tongans living legally in the United States could face growing uncertainty under a new Trump administration immigration directive that may force many Green Card applicants to leave America and apply from Tonga instead.

The policy announcement by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) signals one of the most significant shifts in American immigration processing in decades and could directly affect Tongan students, temporary workers, church workers and families hoping to secure permanent residency while already living in the United States.

Under the new directive, foreigners in the United States on temporary visas who wish to obtain permanent residency will generally be required to return to their home country and apply through U.S. consular offices overseas, unless they qualify under what the government described as “extraordinary circumstances.”

“We’re returning to the original intent of the law to ensure aliens navigate our nation’s immigration system properly,” USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said in the agency’s statement.

“From now on, an alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances.”

The move represents a major tightening of the immigration system and challenges a long-standing practice that allowed many legal migrants already inside the United States to apply for adjustment of status without leaving the country. According to Doug Rand, a former senior adviser at USCIS, around 600,000 people already in the US apply for a green card each year — the majority of whom could now be affected.

For decades, that pathway has been widely used by spouses of U.S. citizens, skilled workers, students, religious visa holders and other temporary migrants seeking permanent residency.

Immigration lawyers and advocacy groups in the United States have warned the changes could create significant disruption for migrant communities, particularly those with strong family-based migration patterns such as Pacific Islanders.

“USCIS is trying to upend decades of processing of adjustment of status,” said Shev Dalal-Dheini, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“This all applies very broadly to anyone seeking a green card.”

For Tongans, the implications could be substantial — and are compounded by existing U.S. restrictions already in place against the Kingdom.

Tonga was placed on a United States list subject to partial visa suspensions in January 2026, halting the processing of visitor, business, student and exchange visas, linked in part to national security concerns including relatively high visa overstay rates among Tongan nationals.

For Tongan green card applicants, that creates what humanitarian organisation World Relief has described as a “Catch-22.”

“If families are told that the non-citizen family member must return to his or her country of origin to process their immigrant visa, but immigrant visas are not being processed there, it’s a Catch-22,” World Relief wrote in a public statement. “These policies will effectively create an indefinite separation of families.”

The United States is home to a sizeable Tongan diaspora. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, nearly 79,000 people of Tongan descent live in America, including those of partial ancestry. Many are concentrated in states such as Utah, California, Hawaii and Texas, while maintaining close financial and cultural ties to the Kingdom through remittances, church networks and extended family support systems.

Many Tongans living in America do so within tightly connected multi-generational family structures where migration is often linked not only to personal opportunity, but to supporting relatives back home in Tonga.

Community advocates fear that forcing applicants to leave the United States during the Green Card process could result in prolonged family separation, employment disruption and uncertainty over whether applicants would be allowed to return.

The concerns are likely to be particularly sensitive for families already navigating complex visa situations or those relying on sponsorship arrangements through relatives, churches or employers.

USCIS defended the policy by arguing temporary visas were never intended to become a pathway to permanent residency.

“Non-immigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose,” Kahler said.

“Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process.”

The agency said the changes would help redirect limited USCIS resources toward other priorities, including citizenship applications and visas for victims of violent crime and human trafficking.

However, immigration experts say major questions remain unanswered, including whether the changes will affect applications already underway and whether applicants would be required to remain outside the United States throughout the entire processing period.

There are also concerns about delays at American consular offices overseas, where visa processing times in some countries can already stretch for months or longer.

Rand was direct about the policy’s intent. “The goal of this policy is very explicit,” he said. “Senior officials in this administration have said over and over that they want fewer people to get permanent residency because permanent residency is a path to citizenship and they want to block that path for as many people as possible.”

The policy forms part of a broader push by the Trump administration to tighten both illegal and legal immigration pathways into the United States.

For Tonga, the development serves as another reminder of how deeply global immigration policies can affect Pacific Island communities whose economies and family networks remain closely tied to overseas migration.

For many Tongan families, migration to the United States has never been simply about individual opportunity, but about supporting entire extended families across borders. Any disruption to that pathway could ultimately be felt not only in American households, but in communities throughout Tonga itself.