On the time it takes to leave, and how many people are frustrated with what they didn’t know before they planned to leave,” says Sanaullah

I would love to leave. The longer it takes, my life is at higher risk,” says Sanaullah. Too many people in his hometown know that he worked for the U.S. troops.

“But by the time they wanted to [carry out the plan] one of the guys who was living in the same building with me informed me,” he says. He says he escaped by climbing through the window. NPR uses his first name for security reasons.

“I know some business owners who were put out of their homes.” I am still waiting. I don’t understand why the process is disconnected. “I’m so frustrated and so disappointed. It never occurred to me that that could happen.

The Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Program in the United States after the Taliban Return: A State Department spokesperson tells NPR about the 200 000 sworn-in Afghans

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, over 88,500 Afghans have been resettled in the U.S. since the Taliban returned to power last year, 20 years after their overthrow in 2001. That number represents a combination of different types of visas.

There is more than 74,000 applicants stuck in the Special Immigrant Visa program, who were supposed to be helped by the program. A State Department spokesperson tells NPR that between July 2021 and July 2022, 15,000 SIVs have been issued to principal applicants and eligible family members.

Former employees of the previous government and military interpreters are also at risk, as well as activists, journalists, and other people who have worked for the previous government.

One female Afghan student, who does not want NPR to use her name because she fears for her safety, has been accepted to study architecture at a university in Malaysia.

But in September, she suffered another setback. She was told by the Malaysian agency processing her paperwork that her passport, which was valid for another 13 months, needed to be valid for over 18 months in order to receive her study visa.

In August, a group of 120 students were about to board a flight to the Middle East. But only the male students were allowed to travel. Taliban authorities held back 60 female students and instructed them to go home.

Among those denied boarding was a 19-year-old student, who does not want to be named because of her history of activism and because she fears her scholarship to study in Doha, Qatar, may be revoked.

“We went to the airport, everything was going normal, and then suddenly, the Taliban came and took our tickets and our passports They said you don’t have a male guardian. What are you doing? She asked where you were going.

But the whole system was put under pressure because of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department all scrambling to catch up.

Up until now, Afghans could be granted humanitarian parole at the port of entry by Homeland Security. The majority of the Afghan nationals who’ve been to the US over the past year entered this way. That won’t be allowed anymore.

The State Department told NPR that staff has been added at the United States embassies in Pakistan, Pakistan, and the U.S. But the visa pipelines for Afghans remain clogged.

Operation Allies Welcome, established to coordinate U.S. government efforts to resettle at-risk Afghan nationals, is ending, and being replaced. “Operation Allies Welcome” has been a huge effort to resettle our Afghan allies in communities across the country. This Operation is made possible by partnerships across numerous federal agencies; state and local governments; non-profit organizations, including faith-based and veterans’ groups; the private sector; and local communities,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement responding to NPR’s questions about what this change might mean for Afghans who are in the pipeline.

The funding for the Afghan Adjustment Act, a bill to simplify the immigration process and make it easier for Afghans already in the US to seek residency, was dropped from the spending bill that was passed on Friday. However, the bill did include $3 billion in aid for Afghan resettlement efforts.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/03/1121053865/afghanistan-refugees-visas

In-Person Interviews for Refugees under the Trump-Era Health Measure: “It’s a Wonderful Idea”, and “How to Unwind the Republican-Inspired Agenda”

“I try to figure out how to deliver the most terrible news in the world” says the man. There are over seven hundred thousand principal applicants ahead of you. Good luck when you wait for the American government to fix the bureaucratic mess that it has created.

Like many others, he has called on the White House to cut red tape, and if the U.S. is not going to reopen the embassy in Kabul, to at least allow consular interviews to happen online — but for now, in-person interviews continue for humanitarian parole applications and SIVs, allowing for the collection of biometric data and fingerprints.

When the refugees are relocated to the US, they will be able to petition for their immediate family members to join them by providing evidence of their relationship. The relative would then be interviewed at an embassy by a U.S. official before being approved for travel.

The resources of those who have waited for years to be admitted into the United States are being diverted because millions of people are being admitted.

Many attention has been paid to migrants crossing the border in record numbers because of the decision by Republican-led states such as Texas to send some of them to liberal bastions such as Martha’s Vineyard as a way to provoke outrage.

Those migrants can secure asylum if they can prove they would be persecuted at home; otherwise they face deportation. More than a million have been turned away on the basis of a Trump-era public health measure called Title 42, which allows the United States to expel people who would have otherwise been admitted for an evaluation of their asylum claims or placed into deportation proceedings.

In special circumstances, the United States government can grant “parole” to people from other countries, a legal tool that allows them to enter the country but does not automatically confer a green card or citizenship. That is what Mr. Biden’s administration has done in the cases of many refugees from Afghanistan, Ukraine and now Venezuela.

Over the past two years, the Biden administration has taken some steps to rebuild the overburdened refugee system, even as the president and his senior aides have debated how to unwind the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda. Mr. Biden expressed concern over Republican attacks on his immigration policies as apprehensions at the U.S. southern border hit a record.

Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is one of a group of Republicans who are pushing the Afghan Adjustment Act. Chuck Grassley of Iowa refused to support it because he believed the Afghans could pose a security threat.