Visa program not enough to save lives of those who helped US troops in Afghanistan, advocates say

Shamsurahman Zaland feels very lucky to be living in the United States.

In his home country of Afghanistan — where he helped the U.S. mission through his work for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — he frequently received death threats from insurgent groups such as the Taliban.

As a result, the 39-year-old Afghan man and his family were able to come to the United States in 2018 on a special immigrant visa (SIV), awarded to those who have aided the United States in war-torn countries and who are being threatened as a result.

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But it took a 2 1/2-year wait.

Now, living in Dublin, Zaland believes the United States government has an obligation to the people who have worked for it in Afghanistan — and that they should fulfill it sooner than later.

He's not the only one.

Advocates and lawmakers are sounding the alarm, saying that Afghans who helped the U.S. mission in the country are in danger and at risk of not getting to safety before U.S. troops pull out after an almost 20-year presence. That's currently scheduled to happen by Sept. 11, 2021.

The visa program that brought Zaland and his family to the United States is backlogged and can take an average of two to three years from beginning to end to come through. That's time advocates say Afghans don't have.

"This is a life or death situation," Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, an Afghanistan war veteran, said during a Thursday press call for the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy organization

Nelson — a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and the former director of the office of combating terrorism at the National Security Council for former President George W. Bush — talked of the importance of getting people out of the country safely. He and others also called for an evacuation of Afghan people who helped the United States and thus are in danger.

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The demand of those on the call was similar to a request from Honoring Our Promises, a bipartisan congressional working group of 21 members of Congress who wrote a letter to President Joe Biden on June 4. The group was established to prevent Afghans who served with U.S. troops from being killed by the Taliban, ISIS and Al Qaeda after the United States withdrawal.

The working group said it decided the United States must evacuate Afghans immediately because no American entity is able to protect them in their country post-withdrawal.

In a statement emailed to The Dispatch, a State Department spokeswoman said the U.S. is processing SIV applications "as quickly as we possibly can" and that, though troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, America is not.

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"While U.S. troops will leave by September, the United States will maintain a robust diplomatic presence through the U.S. Embassy, and our teams in the Consular Section in Kabul and in Washington will continue processing SIV applications as expeditiously as possible, as the security situation in Kabul allows," the spokeswoman said.

Still, the lawmakers who wrote to Biden noted that an evacuation isn't unprecedented. The U.S. evacuated around 130,000 Vietnamese refugees during the Vietnam War in 1975 and thousands of Kurds in 1996 after the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War.

"The current environment in Afghanistan clearly merits such action," the lawmakers wrote. "If we fail to protect our allies in Afghanistan, it will have a lasting impact on our future partnerships and global reputation, which will then be a great detriment to our troops and the future of our national security.

"Veterans in Congress understand this firsthand: When we recruited our Afghan friends, we promised to have their backs."

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The lawmakers introduced legislation to improve and hasten the SIV process by raising the visa cap and waiving a medical exam requirement, but they said that those changes— and the SIV program itself — are not enough.

"It takes an average of 800+ days, and we plan to withdraw in less than 100 days ... It is clear that the process will not be rectified in time to help the 18,000+ applicants who need visas before our withdrawal," the letter reads.

Nelson said military and diplomatic missions in other countries require close coordination with local allies.

"We can't undermine those in anyway," he said. "It's important to send a message ... We are a steadfast ally and we will be with them."

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Zaland, who lives in Dublin now and owns his own tailoring business, said he can't even compare his life in Afghanistan to his life now.

“It is totally different, I cannot compare anything in terms of security,” said Zaland, whose work with USAID in Afghanistan for three years from 2010 to 2013 — helping improve the economy and job prospects in a large municipality there — made him eligible for the visa.

Because of his work with the United States, he and his family received death threats from insurgent groups like the Taliban.

Zaland’s daughter was kidnapped by an insurgent group in 2012 before quickly escaping, and he survived a 2017 suicide bombing during rush hour near the German embassy that killed 80 people and injured 300 others. He received death threats through letters and calls and often wasn’t even able to safely make a drive home to see his family without being threatened.

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“We feel it’s totally different,” said Zaland, a father of seven children ranging in age from 3 to 23. “We feel blessed we came to the United States. My children were not safe, I was not safe. We were living with a lot of anxiety and depression.”

He still worries for the safety of his relatives still living in Afghanistan and said it’s not safe for him to go back to his country. Zaland also said the SIV process is slow, and he believes the U.S. needs to accelerate it.

"That will be very good and that will help hundreds of people. It will save their lives," he said.

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The SIV program, created in 2009 for Afghan people, requires that applicants were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government for two years and are under a serious and ongoing threat because of their work, said Adam Bates, policy counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Project, based in New York.

There is a backlog of 18,000 visa applicants currently, he said. And that doesn't include applicants' children under the age of 21 or their spouses, who can immigrate with them, Bates said, which adds up to a total of more like 70,000 people who are waiting.

The most applications the government has ever processed in a year is a little more than 4,000, Bates said. That was in fiscal year 2017, and since then, the number has dropped considerably.

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"The program has been beset by backlogs and delays," he said. "It's a very long and arduous 14-step process to apply, and the average wait time is somewhere between two and three years right now."

About 15,500 Afghans, like Zaland, have been able to get to safety as a result of the SIV program, but others don't qualify or have been killed while waiting for their applications to be processed, Bates said.

The wait time, long process and requirements that may leave some in need out of the program isn't enough to keep people safe, according to advocates.

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And the issue is time-sensitive. Bates explained that, logistically, getting Afghans out after the U.S. troops have withdrawn would be difficult or impossible since the embassy may close and airports could shut down.

"The government has known for 20 years this would draw to a close, and some thought should be given to people that would be at risk," Bates said. "The biggest concern is just that time is running out. The window is closing to protect these people, and there's just not much evidence that anything is happening ... It's unconscionable."

dking@dispatch.com, @DanaeKing

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Immigrant advocates say visa program isn't enough to save Afghan lives