This, as reported in Stars and Stripes, is an injustice:
Thousands of Afghans and Iraqis and their families have entered the U.S. since Congress enacted The Afghan Allies Protection Act in 2009 and a similar program for Iraq a year earlier. The laws provided for special immigrant visas for these applicants, threatened because of their work with the United States.
But the numbers of Afghans requesting the visas have surpassed the numbers allocated. At the end of September, government data showed that more than 9,000 Afghan applicants and nearly 13,000 of their family members were caught somewhere in the lengthy application process. Congress had initially allocated 1,500 Afghan SIVs for fiscal 2017, but midway through the year, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers introduced legislation to provide 2,500 more visas for Afghans – still far short of what was needed.
The Iraq SIV program stopped accepting new applications in September 2014, and U.S.-affiliated Iraqis must now go through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for resettlement.
The Afghans and Iraqis who worked with us and helped us are deserving of our assistance, need our assistance, and are among the most vetted immigrants in history. We should be admitting more of them not fewer.
Which is why we need to avoid foreign adventures, it always ends with them, here.
Reminds me of the Hmong.
Maybe it’s something about this town, or maybe just the part where I live and shop, but it seems that there are now more foreign born residents than locals. I don’t even recognize most of the languages. No, we are not having a crime wave, but it still feels like an invasion. Too many, too fast. And I know there are people, mostly white, who would say I have no right to object. I’ve had it too good too long, die and turn the whole thing into the Third World.
You have every right to object, Gray. But this is what happens when things become politicized. Many if not most of the subject applicants risked their lives. I’ll bet a further accounting would show these people to have relatively desirable profiles. But the politics has some glorifying some of the least desirable. Apparently because they dream or something…….
For one thing they’re more likely to speak English than average Iraqis or Afghans. In Iraq at least medical school classes are taught in English so all life sciences professionals tend to speak English.