Afghan allies trapped in immigration limbo

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 4th of March.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Next up: Afghans who helped the US.

President Trump temporarily shut down the refugee resettlement program. But many people are now urging the president to make an exception: for Afghans, who assisted the U.S. government before it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.

MAST: But others argue the term Afghan allies doesn’t distinguish between those who directly assisted the U.S. government and others seeking to escape Taliban rule for other reasons.

WORLD’s Compassion reporter Addie Offereins published her findings last month on the problem.

Here’s WORLD Radio’s Anna Johansen Brown with her story:

AUDIO: (GUN SHOTS, PEOPLE YELLING) Afghan residents and those fleeing reprisal from the Taliban were still flooding the area Monday desperately trying to find a way out of the country.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: The Taliban stormed Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul on August 15th, 2021. Afghanistan’s president fled the country and U.S. troops began a chaotic withdrawal from the country with hundreds of thousands of Afghans begging for a spot on one of the departing planes.

AUDIO: A U.S. official says troops that had taken over the airport had to fire their guns in the air to keep people off the tarmac and the planes flying. The U.S. says it’s trying to get tens of thousands of at risk Afghans who worked for the government out.

Afghans relocating to the United States relied on three immigration pathways: special immigrant visas, the refugee resettlement system, and humanitarian parole. Trump’s refugee resettlement pause affected all three.

Afghans who worked directly for the U.S. government or military are eligible for what’s called a special immigrant visa—or S-I-Vs. It includes a pathway to permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship.

VANDIVER: My generation of veterans grew up fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Shawn VanDiver served in the U.S. Navy off the coast of Iraq.

VANDIVER: Critical to our efforts are our wartime allies.

He now heads up an advocacy coalition called Afghan Evac.

VANDIVER: There are about 1,200 to 1,500 between Qatar and Albania that have approved SIVs in their passports.

The Trump administration clarified the refugee pause wouldn’t bar SIV holders from entering the country, but VanDiver said the program didn’t escape unscathed.

VANDIVER: You can still apply for a visa, you can still interview for a visa, there’s just no help to get you from Afghanistan to where you can interview for that visa and no help to get from there to the United States once you’ve earned your shot at the American dream.

Some Republican lawmakers are echoing VanDiver’s plea for an Afghan exception. Here’s Texas Rep. Michael McCaul on CBS’ Face the Nation:

MCCAUL: ​ They worked with our troops to defeat the Taliban, which unfortunately, Biden surrendered to. But it seems to me, we ought to live up to our word, otherwise down the road in another conflict, no one’s going to trust us.

The number of SIV visas is capped, and there’s only about 10,000 spots left in the program. But roughly 130,000 Afghans have applied, not including their family members. It’s unclear how many would actually qualify as legitimate SIV applicants.

And current terminology isn’t helping. The available tallies of Afghans waiting in their home country or third countries lump together SIV applicants and Afghans applying for refugee status or humanitarian parole.

Some advocates claim all of them are Afghan allies.

RUSH: So Afghan allies, it has a lot of emotional aspects to it.

Nayla Rush is a senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reducing immigration.

RUSH: And these are people supposedly who worked with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and because of this collaboration were threatened.

She pointed out that not all of the Afghans in the refugee pipeline worked directly with the U.S. government. The Biden administration widened the definition of allies when it designated some Afghans as Priority 2 refugees.

RUSH: If you have worked for a US government funded program or project in Afghanistan supported through a US government grant or cooperative agreement…Other Afghans who were employed in Afghanistan by a U.S. based media organization or NGO. It has widened the group of people who have access to this program.

Marjila Badakhsh trained journalists in Afghanistan until her employer closed their offices after the Taliban took over in 2021. Her organization was affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy, which receives the majority of its funding from the U.S. government.

Badakhsh qualified for a Priority 2 refugee visa and finished her vetting at a U.S. military base in Qatar.

BADAKHSH: So I was there for 27 days and after my refugee process was done there I came to United States.

She knows of others who were waiting to reunite with family already in the United States.

BADAKHSH: I can definitely feel them because I was in the same situation that they are now, but for me there was a future, I could come, but for them with this policy, if it lasts for long it will be very tough for our Afghan families and refugees.

The Biden administration allowed tens of thousands of other Afghans to enter the U.S. on humanitarian parole. That’s a temporary status that includes work authorization but doesn’t have a pathway to permanent residency. In the chaos of Kabul’s fall, Rush said it wasn’t clear whether all the Afghan parolees assisted the U.S. government or even would have qualified for refugee status in the first place.

RUSH: There was chaos. Nobody knew who was who. Those who could get on a plane got on a plane.

Rush said she would understand if the Trump administration made an exception for SIV applicants who have been accepted into the program already but haven’t yet reached the United States.

But she said cries for a broader exception for Afghan allies don’t make any distinction between refugees, parolees, or SIV holders.

Last week, a federal judge blocked Trump’s refugee resettlement suspension.

AUDIO: The ruling came after a lawsuit brought by major refugee aid groups. They argued Trump’s executive order…goes against the system Congress created for moving refugees into the U.S.

The government is likely to appeal the ruling. And, so far, it’s unclear how the ruling will affect Afghan resettlement.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

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