It’s a tragedy and it was completely preventable: Immigration advocates blame Biden for Afghan refugee mess

[ad_1]

Today, Afghans who served as translators for American soldiers and then waited years for American visas are in hiding, burning evidence of their work, or making life and death decisions about whether or not to risk a trip to the airport. Some, say the lawyers, have already been killed.

President Biden said on Wednesday that US troops will stay in Afghanistan for as long as it takes to evacuate the Americans and their allies from the country, even if that means the soldiers will stay there past their original withdrawal deadline of August 31. . Isaiah Campbell / NYUT

Refugee organizations and some of Bidens’ Democratic colleagues say the chaos was preventable, warning the administration for months to speed up visa processing and evacuations. This further reinforces their mistrust after Bidens’ decision in May to keep overall refugee admissions at all-time lows favored by Donald Trump, which Biden canceled following an outcry.

It was a tragedy and it was completely preventable, said Sunil Varghese, policy director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, which represents several thousand Afghans who apply for special immigrant visas to enable them to relocate to the United States.

The president said human rights would be the central focus of his foreign policy. I don’t think we saw the action.

Sunil Varghese, political directory of the International Refugee Project

The president said human rights would be the central focus of his foreign policy, Varghese said. I don’t think we saw the action.

According to the State Department, around 20,000 Afghans are currently in the process of applying for special immigrant visas, which are designed to give Afghans and Iraqis who assisted the United States in its wars in those countries a way to relocate to the United States. States. The process, as defined by Congress, is cumbersome and can take up to three years. Family members of visa recipients are eligible to travel with them, so advocates estimate 70,000 or more Afghans are waiting to relocate with the program.

White House officials say they inherited a pending visa system from Trump and made multiple efforts to speed up the process. They issued more than 5,600 special immigrant visas to Afghans between April and July, the fastest rate in history and say more than 3,500 applicants and their family members have arrived in the United States since the 1st January.

But thousands more are still waiting. Among them is a woman known as Fatima, a women’s rights activist who first applied for her visa in 2018, believing her work with US-funded projects would make her a target. of the Taliban.

I can’t face them as a single woman in this situation, she said in a recording she made on Wednesday afternoon and provided to IRAP. They can find us anytime, any day, and kill us all.

Afghans attempted to enter the military side of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday. The city’s airport was inundated with people trying to leave the country after the Taliban takeover.Victor J. Blue / NYT

Advocates began to privately contact Bidens’ advisers and the State Department during the presidential transition to urge them to move more people, faster, arguing that the Afghans who helped the United States would be particularly vulnerable after the imminent date of military withdrawal. But the administration refused to take drastic measures to meet that deadline, such as a mass evacuation of all Afghan allies whose visas were pending.

What we have seen over the past week of Afghan families and children desperately swarming the tarmac with nothing but clothes on their backs, fleeing a war-torn country, sadly it’s heartbreaking but this n ‘is not surprising to me, said Krish OMara Vignarajah. , President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. We knew it was going to happen.

Pressure on the Biden administration to take action also came from both sides on Capitol Hill.

Over the past few months, I have been extremely direct with the administration they need to carry out an evacuation. Mere visa processing won’t be enough and I’m not sure why they couldn’t figure that out, Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Salem, said in an interview earlier this week.

As many as 70,000 Afghans are waiting to be resettled in the United States under the State Department’s special immigrant visa process SHAKIB RAHMANI / AFP via Getty Images

Republican Senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney of Utah issued a joint statement saying we have a duty and moral obligation to help these brave men and women.

Sometimes this week, Biden has revealed himself out of touch with the plight of Afghans, further alienating immigration advocates. In his opening remarks regarding the country’s fall to the Taliban on Monday, he said one of the reasons the evacuations had not started earlier was that some Afghans wanted to leave earlier, a point which has been vigorously argued. challenged by refugee advocates who have watched their clients’ cases languish for years.

It is beyond absurd to claim that Afghans do not want to leave, said Michael Breen, chief executive of Human Rights First, a Washington-based rights organization that said the Biden administration was the solely responsible for the failure to evacuate more Afghan allies. We literally have Afghans so desperate that they cling to the wheels of American planes and die.

Biden also said he did not want to trigger a crisis of confidence in the Afghan government by evacuating more refugees sooner.

When told about this Monday image during an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, Biden interrupted, appearing defensive. That was four or five days ago, he says.

We have a moral obligation to help those who have helped us. And I deeply feel the urgency.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, on Afghan citizens who assisted US troops there

Biden said on Wednesday they would act quickly to evacuate more Afghans from Kabul airport in the coming days. At a press briefing the same day, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said: “We have a moral obligation to help those who have helped us. And I deeply feel the urgency.

Afghans lined up to board an S military plane to leave Afghanistan on Thursday at Kabul military airport SHAKIB RAHMANI / AFP via Getty Images

But a State Department spokesperson who declined to speak formally said more than half of special visa applicants are in the early stages of the process and need to take action before their applications can be processed. , a claim that angering defenders who wonder how exactly people are supposed to handle the bureaucracy when they are in hiding from the Taliban, risking beatings or worse if they attempt to move across the country.

They blame our own allies for their failure to have a working application process and use it as an excuse, said Becca Heller, executive director of IRAP. It is morally wrong.

The conflict comes after immigration advocates had to pressure the administration to lift its ceiling on refugees from the historic low of 15,000 resettlements implemented by the Trump administration, which Biden initially said refused to do in April. After a backlash, he revised it to 62,500, but the pace of overall U.S. refugee resettlement this year is still at an all-time low.

Advocates largely blame Trump’s dismantling of the refugee resettlement system for the few resettlements so far this year, and they were encouraged to see the pace pick up during the year. But they also suspect that Republicans ‘seizure of the narrative around the influx of migrants to the nations’ southern border has made Biden and his advisers reluctant to open the doors to refugees and others in need of American protection. .

They fear the backlash they imagine coming, said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, who added that Biden and his advisers underestimated the political backlash that followed their initial refusal to ‘raise the ceiling of refugees, and now their failure. evacuate more allies sooner. This small circle around the president has no experience of immigrant and refugee politics.

Numerous polls conducted this summer have shown voters rate Biden lower on the immigration issue than on other issues, including the economy and the fight against the pandemic, which may be due to the increase in number of migrants seeking to cross the southern border.

We must not make these people suffer because we were surprised by the rapid capture of the whole country by the Taliban.

David Leopold, an immigration lawyer who was part of Biden’s transition team

A progressive polling group, Data for Progress, found that 55% of those polled supported speeding up the process of granting visas to Afghan allies.

Trump, whose policies were historically hostile to refugees, appeared confused over whether or not to attempt to criticize Biden on the issue, alternately claiming that Biden should have evacuated the Afghan allies earlier and slamming a photo of the one of the flights that showed him doing it for not being America enough to begin with.

US soldiers stood guard as Afghans waited to board a US military plane at Kabul military airport on Thursday SHAKIB RAHMANI / AFP via Getty Images

David Leopold, an Ohio immigration lawyer who was part of Bidens’ transition team, defended the administration with far more humanity and benevolence than his predecessors, and urged the administration to get Afghans out of the country first and process their visas later – in the United States. States or other countries.

These people should not suffer because we were surprised by the rapid capture of the whole country by the Taliban, said Leopold. We have a duty to them, we have an obligation to this country.

Jess Bidgood can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @jessbidgood.

[ad_2]