Stranded Afghans

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: legal protections for Afghan refugees.

Many of them are waiting to find out where they stand with U.S. immigration authorities. They came to the country under temporary protected status, allowing them to live and work in the US when conditions in their home countries were deemed too dangerous to return.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The Biden administration granted that TPS to Afghans after ordering the U.S. military out of Afghanistan and allowing the Taliban to regain control.

But under an immigration policy shift, the Trump administration rescinded it.

So what happens next? WORLD’s Josh Schumacher reports.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: In May, the Department of Homeland Security reported that things were looking up in Afghanistan; economic activity and tourism appear to be improving while armed conflict is going down.

ARTHUR: So there are 41 million people living in Afghanistan and you know, the vast majority of the population there isn't at any risk at all.

Andrew Arthur is a resident fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. He says that while life in Afghanistan may not be attractive, it’s not so bad under Taliban rule that the U.S. must extend temporary protected status indefinitely.

ARTHUR: Not every country that has a government that we necessarily wouldn't want to live under is a country that should be granted temporary protective status… because that's not the purpose of temporary protected status.

Not everyone agrees with that assessment.

Daniel Salazar is a policy advisor at Global Refuge.

SALAZAR: Half the country, you know, more than 20 million people being in need of humanitarian assistance, the Taliban running the country with, you know, half the population experiencing a state of gender apartheid, persecution for religious and ethnic minorities. The list kind of goes on even though there isn’t the big scale kind of conflict that you used to see between the Afghan central government and the Taliban.

Even as the Department of Homeland Security says the situation has improved, the White House still identifies the Taliban as terrorists. Salazar points to a recent proclamation put out by President Trump.

SALAZAR: Afghanistan ended up on the list of the travel ban countries, the proclamation that came out on June 4th and went into effect on June 9th. And in part, it’s because it says that the Taliban is classified as a terrorist organization from the United States government's perspective, and it's not a competent state authority that can provide the vetting and whatnot that helps screen and vet foreign nationals before they come to the United States.

Salazar believes it’s self-contradictory for the administration to insist that Afghanistan is a safe place to return individuals to… while also saying it’s incapable of properly vetting its own citizens before they travel to the United States.

Other advocates say Afghans who helped the United States fight the Taliban still should receive TPS, because going back to Afghanistan now likely would not end well.

SOERENS: The Taliban is still in control. They still persecute religious minorities and people whom they suspect of having been allied with the United States military…

Matthew Soerens is vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief. He says sending people back to Afghanistan means, basically, signing them up for persecution.

SOERENS: They absolutely persecute women and girls and deny them the ability to pursue education or be treated anything like equally.

Even if Afghans in the U.S. are not deported, losing TPS could cost them their jobs.

SOERENS: So you take people who are self-sufficient economically, providing for their family, who suddenly are not legally allowed to do so.

President Trump said this past weekend in a social media post that he would assist Afghan nationals currently waiting in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar for the opportunity to enter the United States. Many of those nationals assisted U.S. troops deployed to their home country.

Advocates for Afghan nationals both inside and outside the United States applauded Trump’s statement but called for action… not just words supporting Afghans across the globe.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

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