It has been 3 years since President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. would pull out all its troops from Afghanistan. This caused a domino effect that caused thousands of Afghans to flood to Hamid Karzai International Airport, to escape the ensuing rule of the Taliban.
Tens of Thousands of those Afghans had worked with the U.S. governments as interpreters, drivers and so much more during the previous 20 years. This earned them the opportunity to secure an SIV(special immigrant visa). This would allow them to bring their families to the United States.
The SIV program which grants several thousand visas a year is now severely backlogged, and it requires recipients to provide detailed information about their past employment with the U.S. government and then have it verified.
So, in this crazed rush to evacuate more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan in the las 6 weeks of the U.S. campaign. Tens of thousands were admitted to the U.S. instead under special humanitarian parole, a status that allows them to live and work in the United States but that needs to be renewed.
Many of these cases are now stuck in an immigration limbo, there is no straight path they can follow to get legal permanent residency or citizenship in their new home.
- Yasir Farhad
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