Fleeing Afghans should not be left in immigration limbo
While serving in the U.S. Air Force, I integrated with a U.S. Army brigade during a deployment to Iraq in 2007-2008. At a forward operating base outside of Baghdad, I became close friends with one of the local Iraqi interpreters who worked alongside our infantry troops. My friend had to work under an alias as she accompanied U.S. forces on missions.
As is the fate for many local interpreters who assisted the United States or allied militaries, my friend knew that bad actors would eventually find out that she was assisting the coalition, and she began to fear for her life. She applied for a Special Immigrant Visa, a visa designed specifically for foreign nationals assisting us overseas who found their lives in danger. Unfortunately, her application languished for years due to slow processing and the small annual allocation of these visas from Congress.
Just by luck, she later gained admittance to the United States through the Refugee Admissions Program (another avenue for entry, whose annual number of admissions is determined by the president) and is now a proud California resident and U.S. citizen. Many former Afghan interpreters are unlikely to experience such luck for a variety of reasons, including the fact that there is no longer a U.S. embassy in Afghanistan.
For the past few months, ad hoc groups of veterans and civilians across the United States have scrambled to provide useful information to Afghans seeking to flee a worsening security situation. Many of us are not upset that the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan is over. Twenty years of conflict have had a real toll, and many friends and Afghans have perished. We are upset that the evacuation of vulnerable Afghans was rushed and left far too many behind.
Over 70,000 Afghans have arrived in the United States following the fall of Kabul. Many of these Afghans were former interpreters who had applied for the Special Immigrant Visa, but like my friend, had their application fall into a bureaucratic black hole. Most of the Afghans who made it out on evacuation flights did not have cleared visas for entry.
They have been permitted to enter the United States through a process called Humanitarian Parole, but they find themselves under a cloud of legal uncertainty. This parole status only allows Afghans to temporarily remain here; it is not the equivalent of a visa and does not create a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
Recently, I joined with several local Afghan American leaders, and other supporters, and met with the staff of U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla to garner support for the soon-to-be-introduced Afghan Adjustment Act.
The act would give Afghans the chance to apply to become lawful permanent residents. Generally, applying for asylum (someone asking for protection after already fleeing their country and arriving in the United States) requires extensive production of documentary support, and there is a yearslong backlog of processing.
But many of us in our coalition advised families in Afghanistan to destroy certain documents, as the discovery of such papers at Taliban checkpoints could lead to their death. After harrowing and life-threatening experiences saving their families from violence, Afghans should not be further traumatized by an immigration system that is simply not adequately prepared for their arrival.
California’s culture and economy is wonderful precisely because of our multiethnic and immigrant populations. Because of the lack of available housing stock in the state, not one California city was listed as an official placement for resettlement. But Californians do have the power to urge their members of Congress to support the Afghan Adjustment Act so that those Afghans who were able to flee can begin to rebuild their lives with the security that permanent residency provides.