Fear Arising! Biden Might Deport Those Evacuated From Afghanistan

Over 77,000 Afghans fled to the United States in a panic last August after the Taliban took power in their country. One year later, concerns have been raised that the displaced Afghans, some of whom assisted U.S. military soldiers throughout the 20-year Iraq War, may be subject to deportation from the United States. A majority of Afghan refugees and illegal immigrants are said to have been granted “temporary” legal status in the United States in 2021.

Remember the Afghan pullout a year ago right now? Maybe that’s why we had the Trump raid at this point in time to distract again from the news reporting on it.

— 🇺🇸🍊🇺🇸🍊 (@Weimman88) August 15, 2022

Megan Flores, the director of the Immigrant and Refugee Outreach Center, warns that time is of the essence. “Right now, a lot of evacuees are in panic mode. They know they’re coming up on the year-mark,” says Flores. “They don’t have anyone to help them, and we don’t have a lot of resources to point them to.”

After President Joe Biden pushed for a citizenship option for Afghan refugees in May, a group of senators from both parties filed the “Afghan Adjustment Act.” Passage of the “Afghan Adjustment Act,” according to Khalis Noori, who has been assisting Afghans in resettling in the United States, including 1,400 in Virginia, would represent the fulfillment of a promise made by U.S. authorities last summer. “If the lawmakers do this, then history will not forget that,” said Noori, who’s also an Afghan escapee. “The Afghan people will not forget that.“

The Biden administration was not pleased with a report from House Republicans last week that criticized the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. Thus, the White House issued a document on President Biden’s behalf saying that his decision to leave Afghanistan enhanced national security and bolstered America’s propensity to defuse terrorism threats overseas. The document blamed former President Donald Trump’s formal contract with the Taliban, declaring that deal “weakened our partners in the Afghan government.”

Officials for Biden also criticized the Republican report conclusions, sponsored by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as “partisan” and “filled with falsehoods. “When President Biden took office, he was faced with a choice: ramp up the war and put even more American troops at risk, or finally end the United States’ longest war after two decades of American presidents sending U.S. troops to fight and die in Afghanistan and $2 trillion spent,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson authored in the memo, according to Axios.

The memo proceeded: “The President refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago — and we fundamentally disagree with those who advocated for miring the United States’ fighting men and women in an indefinite war with no exit strategy.“

Afghans who were U.S. government allies can petition for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) in order to legally settle in the US.

However, here is Business Insider’s diagnosis of the systemic issue: There are currently over 74,000 pending applications for the SIV. In addition, there is now a backlog of over 400,000 asylum claims being processed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“Our asylum system is pretty broken. So they enter this long line of asylum applications that just adds to a stress level that people don’t need after what they’ve been through,” said Alicia Wrenn, senior head of settlements and assimilation at Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a non-profit organization that has represented about 4,200 Afghan survivors.