This is the first installment in a Washington Examiner series detailing the struggles of Afghan activists and allies affected by the U.S. withdrawal.
Since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021, coalition forces’ allies, former Afghan government employees, and activists have sought ways to flee Taliban reprisals, violence, and oppression. They also face a growing threat of mass starvation.
Unfortunately, while the U.S. government has four programs that could bring imperiled Afghans to safety, each has failed to act with speed to assist around 62,000 stranded Afghan visa applicants.
The Special Immigrant Visa program, created in 2008, is reserved for interpreters and affiliates of U.S. forces. In recognition of the danger of retaliation applicants face, SIVs were meant to be fulfilled in nine months. Instead, fulfillment takes 658 days on average, with a backlog of 18,800 applicants recorded in 2019. By “surg[ing] resources,” a State Department official tells me 8,200 SIV applications have been processed since Jan. 20, 2021. The official did not respond to requests for a specific count of SIV candidates stuck in Afghanistan or an estimated completion date for processing visas underway. They did confirm “thousands” of new SIV inquiries have been submitted since August.
The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program takes referrals for people with “compelling protection needs” to its Priority-1 program and takes referrals from Afghans who worked with the U.S. military, in a U.S. government-funded program, or with U.S. media or nongovernmental organizations to its Priority-2 program. A State Department official tells me USRAP has received around 17,000 Afghan P-1 and about 11,000 Afghan P-2 referrals. Though the official did not answer questions about how many of these individuals remain stuck in Afghanistan, they noted P-1 and P-2 application processing must occur in a third country and can take “12 – 18 months or longer.”
Caught between the Taliban’s invasive system of checkpoints and the cessation of evacuation flights from Kabul, stranded Afghans with visas and P-1 or P-2 referrals in hand have no easy means to safely exit Afghanistan. The official noted the U.S. “does not facilitate travel to a third country” for P-1 or P-2 candidates and called on the Taliban “to allow freedom of movement for all Afghans.”
Finally, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’s humanitarian parole visa program allows individuals to enter the U.S. “for urgent humanitarian reasons.” Sensing hope in this sweeping description, Afghans flocked to the program. A USCIS official tells me the agency has received 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole since Jul. 1, 2021. They reiterated that the program “is not intended to replace established refugee processing channels.”
Though USCIS has likely taken in $20,125,000 in filing fees at $575 per applicant, as of Dec. 23, 2021, the agency says it has processed only 610 applications. The agency did not respond to questions about its timeline to finish processing all applications but says it has increased personnel by a factor of five.
Assuming this will result in a fivefold increase from USCIS’s processing rate of around five applications per day during the 120 working days between Jul. 1 and Dec. 23, the agency will likely process around 6,634 applicants during the 261 working days of 2022. At this rate, it will take USCIS more than five years and three months to process Afghan humanitarian parole requests. This does not take into account USCIS’s typical annual caseload of around 2,000 applicants.
USCIS tells me it has rejected around 470, roughly 77%, of applicants and offered conditional acceptances to 140. At this rate, only 8,033 applicants may receive conditional acceptances, and 26,967 would remain stuck in Afghanistan. The Afghans who speak with me tell of horrifying instances, years prior to the fall of Kabul, when the Taliban destroyed their homes or threatened, harmed, or killed their friends or family. With chilling bluntness, they describe how these activities continue today.
Though a State Department official says the U.S. budgeted $474 million in fiscal year 2021 to support the humanitarian needs of Afghan citizens, none of the dozens of Afghans I have spoken with have received U.S. or international aid. Most have not collected a salary since the fall of Kabul. Unable to find regular employment, they cobble together money for food and heating supplies with odd jobs or assistance from kind strangers, family, or cash-strapped evacuation groups.
Many Afghans who have been approved for U.S. programs grow desperate, wondering how long they must continue trying to survive in Afghanistan. Some who might be eligible for U.S. programs do not know how to apply or have been rejected for incomprehensible reasons. Others are ineligible but are nonetheless hunted by the Taliban.
The U.S. government must do better. To salvage enduring meaning from the sacrifices our service members and veterans made in Afghanistan, the Biden administration must devote additional resources to assisting the Afghans who aided our efforts.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
