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LOWELL, Massachusetts (AP) – More than 28,000 Afghans have applied for temporary admission to the US since shortly before the Taliban retook Afghanistan and triggered a chaotic US withdrawal on humanitarian grounds, but only about 100 of them have been admitted, according to the Federal approved civil servants.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has struggled to keep up with the surge in applicants for an underutilized program known as humanitarian parole, but promises to add staff to deal with the growing backlog.
Afghan families in the US and the immigrant groups who support them say the slow pace of approvals threatens the safety of their loved ones, who, because of their ties to the West, face an uncertain future under the hard-line Islamic government.
“We worry about their lives,” said Safi, a Massachusetts resident whose family supports 21 relatives seeking humanitarian parole. “Sometimes I think there will be a day when I wake up and get a call that says they are no more.”
The 38-year-old US resident, who asked not to use her last name in fear of retaliation against her relatives, hopes to have her sister, uncle and families join them. She says the families were in hiding and their home was recently destroyed in a bomb attack because her uncle was a prominent local official before the Taliban took power.
The slow pace of approvals is frustrating because families have already paid hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in processing fees, says Chiara St. Pierre, an attorney at the International Institute of New England in Lowell, Massachusetts, a refugee resettlement agency who Safi’s family supports.
Each parole request comes with a $ 575 filing fee, which means USCIS, which is mostly fee-funded, has been sitting on about $ 11.5 million from Afghans in the last few months alone, lament her and other lawyers.
“People really want to get their families out,” said St. Pierre, whose nonprofit has filed more than 50 probation requests for Afghan nationals. “Do we not have a duty to those left behind, especially if they obey our immigration laws and use the opportunities available to them?”
Victoria Palmer, a USCIS spokeswoman, said the agency had trained 44 additional staff to handle the surge in applications. By mid-October, the agency only had six employees working on the program.
Of the more than 100 approved as of July 1, some are still in Afghanistan and some have made it to third countries, she said, declining to provide details. The program typically receives fewer than 2,000 requests per year from all nationalities, of which USCIS approves an average of about 500, according to Palmer.
Part of the challenge is that humanitarian parole requires a face-to-face interview, which means those in Afghanistan with an operating U.S. embassy or consulate must travel to another district after passing the initial screening. US officials warn it could take months longer, and there are no guarantees of parole even after the interview.
Humanitarian probation does not provide a route to legal permanent residence or grant the United States immigrant status. It is intended for foreigners who cannot go through the asylum procedure or other traditional visa procedures but urgently need to leave their country.
The delay in probation requests adds to the 73,000-plus Afghan refugees already evacuated from the country as part of Operation Allies Welcome, which focused on Afghans working as interpreters and in other jobs for the US government.
Most have arrived in the country and been on military bases for relocation to communities across the country, though there are still around 2,000 overseas waiting to enter the US, according to Palmer.
Proponents, however, question some of the recent USCIS decisions for humanitarian parole in Afghanistan, such as prioritizing requests from people already living in other countries. They say this approach runs counter to the programme’s goal of helping the most vulnerable.
The Biden government should instead focus on requests from women and girls, LGBTQ people and religious minorities who are still in the country, said Sunil Varghese of the New York International Refugee Assistance Project.
It could also forego some of the financial documentation required for applicants and their sponsors as Congress passed law granting Afghan evacuees right to refugee benefits, said Lindsay Gray, CEO of Vecina, an Austin, Texas-based resident Immigration training group that trains lawyers and volunteers.
Palmer did not respond directly to the criticism, but said the agency is determining in each case whether there is a “clear, well-documented reason” for granting humanitarian parole and whether other safeguards are available. USCIS also takes into account, among other things, whether the person already has ties to the United States, e.g. B. a family member with legal status or previous employment with the US government.
Meanwhile, Afghans in the US have no choice but to wait and worry.
Bahara, another Afghan woman who lives in Massachusetts and asked to be withheld her last name out of concern for her family, says she is plagued with guilt for leaving her country to attend a local university.
The 29-year-old boarded a plane on August 15, just hours before the Taliban reached the capital, Kabul, resulting in one of the largest mass evacuations in US history.
“It was my dream, but it has completely changed,” says Bahara of enrolling in a US Masters course. “I couldn’t stop thinking about my family. I couldn’t sleep for the first few weeks. I just cried, but it didn’t help. “
Bahara said her family was concerned that Taliban officials paid unannounced visits to people like her father who had worked with the US government after the militant group was originally ousted from the US following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks .
An American family now supports their family on humanitarian parole and gives hope to Bahara, even as they mourn the current situation in their country.
“I can’t believe how everything just collapsed,” said Bahara, who founded a literacy program for children in Afghanistan. “All of the successes and hard work just added up to zero, and now people are suffering.”
Baktash Sharifi Baki, a green card holder who has lived in the US since 2014, was forced to take more drastic measures when Afghanistan quickly fell apart this summer.
The Philadelphia resident, who served as an interpreter for the US government, traveled back in August hoping to get his wife, daughter, mother and godson to safety.
But the family was unable to board any of the last commercial flights from Kabul. Baki has appealed to the US government to allow them to board one of the recently resumed charter flights.
Meanwhile, a friend in Louisiana has offered to sponsor the family on a humanitarian probation request and even pay the costly fees himself.
For the time being, Baki and his family are staying with relatives in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. But he fears that his modest savings will dwindle just as the harsh winter sets in in the region and Afghanistan’s economic crisis deepens.
“We have a really bad situation here,” said Baki. “We have to get out.”
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Associate press writer Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to this report.
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