Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Malawi, Amy Diaz, has revealed that the United States (US) has had issues with the integrity of visa requests from Malawians, with the embassy seeing misuse of official and diplomatic visas.

Diaz was speaking during Sunday’s edition of Times Television’s The Hot Current programme, in which she had been invited to shed light on the surge in rejections of visa applications by her country.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently wrote to the embassy, seeking an explanation after scores of Malawians, including government officials, were denied visas to the US.

In the programme, Diaz said some Malawian passport holders overstay in her country, contravening the conditions of their visas.

“It appears that the diplomatic overstay rate for Malawi is nearly 10 percent, which is extraordinarily high. Typically, the overstay rate for diplomatic or official passports is one percent or less.

“This means we are receiving diplomatic notes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting visas for holders of official or diplomatic passports, and they travel to the United States, overstay their visas, apply for asylum or work illegally in the United States,” Diaz said.

Regarding the recent rejections of visas for officials and others set to travel for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings in Washington DC, Diaz said the embassy worked hard to process what she described as the most important government officials to attend these meetings.

She indicated that among the 43 applications, there was one individual who attended last year’s Spring Meetings, took two other travellers with them and that both of those individuals have yet to return.

“One of them has already applied for asylum and the other seems to be in the process of doing so. These are serious cases,” Diaz said.

She added that when the embassy cannot rely on the integrity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ diplomatic notes, it must be extremely careful in its visa processing, which results in a much longer verification process.

The US embassy official also said her country has had serious misconduct by a senior Malawian diplomat, who was found liable in a civil court in the US but has not paid her $1 million judgement.

She then said her goal is to protect visas for all Malawian students wishing to study in the US and for all businesses that depend on travel to that country.

“[However], we must slow down now to ensure that we reduce overstays so we do not jeopardise visas for any other category of visa applicant from Malawi. I believe this is the right thing to do,” Diaz said.

Further details from her comments indicate that Malawi has not been serious about several diplomatic issues, including providing passport exemplars for diplomatic,