When he was approved for a special visa to immigrate to the United States, Arian Ali thought his luck was about to change. The Taliban had taken over Afghanistan, but he had a way out.Instead, he remains in limbo.Mr. Ali, 43, qualified for the visa by working with the U.S. government in a series of jobs during the 20-year war and had waited since 2014 for approval. That finally happened in October, more than a month after the Biden administration left Afghanistan in a dramatic evacuation as the Taliban seized control of Kabul, the capital.The visa could be picked up at any American embassy. But the one in Kabul had shut down and, without the visa in hand, he was unable to enter any of the countries he deemed safe enough to visit that had open U.S. consular offices.The day before Thanksgiving, immigration lawyers managed to get Mr. Ali and his family on an American charter flight to a U.S. military base outside Doha, Qatar. Now he is back to waiting — for word on how long he will be there, and when he will get the visa he needs stamped in his passport.“Our life became a joke,” Mr. Ali, who agreed to be identified only by a nickname to protect family still in Afghanistan, said in a text message this week from a refugee camp at Al Udeid Air Base. “Taliban kill and U.S. government too slow and reluctant to help,” he said.More than 74,500 Afghans have been given permission to live in the United States, at least temporarily, in the four months since the return of Taliban rule. Though they are no longer in immediate danger, many have had trouble navigating an immigration system that U.S. officials concede was wholly unprepared to help them.Thousands have stayed in squalid camps. Others have been threatened by security forces as they transit neighboring countries. Even those who have made it to the United States worry about how they will afford housing and food.In interviews, more than a half-dozen Afghans in various stages of immigrating to the United States expressed profound gratitude for the help they received in leaving Afghanistan. But they also shared their frustration — echoed by immigration advocates, members of Congress and even Biden administration officials — with a process that has provided little clarity on when the United States will deliver on its promise to protect those who risked their lives to support the American government.“There are lots of people who are trying to find that lucky break that will get them through a door, across the border, on an airplane, get a visa, whatever they need to just get out of the country and try to process themselves into some kind of new reality,” said James B. Cunningham, who served as ambassador to Afghanistan from 2012 to 2014.“Unfortunately, that’s going to continue for a long time,” he said.Biden administration officials say they are trying to ease the passage. But they have struggled with what Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken described last month as a situation that “is in so many ways a complicated story that I’m not sure the American people fully understood.”Additionally, Congress and the White House have failed to resolve whether to give permanent legal status to tens of thousands of Afghans who were evacuated to the United States. That means they could, in theory, be deported in as little as two years.“The U.S. military and diplomatic presence in Afghanistan may have ended in August,” said Sunil Varghese, the policy director for the International Refugee Assistance Project, “but U.S. government’s obligation did not.”Image
Mr. F., who worked with the U.S. government for years, is living in Tajikistan on a short-term visa that expires every month, with no guarantee that it will be renewed.Credit...Greg Kahn for The New York TimesTerrified in Tajikistan
WithBy: Lara Jakes
Title: At Every Step, Afghans Coming to America Encounter Stumbling Blocks
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/12/19/us/politics/afghan-war-refugees.html
Published Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2021 08:00:10 +0000
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