De todo un poco!
It’s a story as old as America, immigrants who have made their home in the United States, reaching out to help those who come after them. This is the case of an Afghan American mother and daughter in Jacksonville, Florida, who are helping with the resettlement of Afghan refugees. VOA’s Zheela Noori reports.
It’s a story as old as America, immigrants who have made their home in the United States, reaching out to help those who come after them. This is the case of an Afghan American mother and daughter in Jacksonville, Florida, who are helping with the resettlement of Afghan refugees. VOA’s Zheela Noori reports.
Amid concerns over new Taliban travel restrictions and a halt in evacuation flights from Afghanistan, U.S. officials are urging the group to honor their commitment to provide safe passage for Afghans seeking to leave the country.
Following their takeover of Afghanistan in August, the Taliban pledged to let all people with proper travel documentation leave, acquiescing to international demands for their unrestricted departure.
A State Department spokesperson said Wednesday that officials had raised concerns over the restrictions with the Taliban.
“Our ability to facilitate relocation for our Afghan allies also depends on the Taliban living up to its commitment of free passage,” the spokesperson said in response to a query from VOA. “We have reiterated this point to them.”
Writing on Twitter, Ian McCary, the U.S. chargé d’affaires to Afghanistan, said Wednesday that “all people with valid travel documents should be able to depart the country.”
The comments came after top Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at a press conference over the weekend that authorities in Afghanistan would stop Afghans from trying to leave the country without an “excuse.”
“I have to say clearly that persons who leave the country along with their families have no excuse … we are preventing them,” Mujahid said.
Hugo Shorter, the British chargé d’affaires, called on the Taliban to clarify the remarks. “Such actions undermine both commitments to the international community and the trust of Afghans,” he tweeted.
Amid the uproar, Mujahid on Tuesday appeared to walk back his comment.
“My remarks about Afghans going abroad was only Afghans who do not have legal documents and are going abroad illegally will be prevented,” he tweeted. “Our compatriots who have legal documents and invitations can travel outside the country and can return to the country.”
Asked by VOA about a separate reported Taliban directive to officials at Afghan ports of entry to stop anyone who has worked with U.S. and NATO forces, Mujahid said, “This report may not be correct.”
The directive was obtained and published by the Afghan news site 8am.af.
Despite Mujahid’s reassurances, the Taliban’s policy on travel remains unclear, leaving in limbo tens of thousands of Afghans who are seeking to evacuate. According to Matt Zeller, a U.S. Army veteran and co-founder of the nonprofit No One Left Behind, more than 250,000 Afghan allies eligible for special immigrant visas and U.S. refugee status remain in Afghanistan.
Since August, when the U.S. military led the evacuation of more than 124,000 people following the Taliban takeover of the capital, Kabul, the State Department and private organizations have chartered aircraft to airlift some of those left behind.
About 10,000 Afghans have gotten out over the past six months, according to Alex Plitsas, chief operating officer and spokesperson for Human First Coalition, a humanitarian organization. He estimates that private groups have spent roughly $100 million on the evacuation process.
But an apparent row between the Taliban and Qatari officials has brought the evacuation flights to a halt in recent weeks, according to several people familiar with the process.
The last State Department-chartered flight from Kabul to Doha was on January 26, and “then it shut down again,” a U.S. government official familiar with the situation said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The [State Department] pipeline is paralyzed, but that seems to have more to do with whatever is going on between the Taliban and Qatar,” the official said. “They are looking for other options in the region.”
The State Department spokesperson did not respond to a question about the date of the last official evacuation.
The spokesperson, however, said the department continues “to facilitate the safe and orderly travel of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and Afghan allies and their eligible family members who wish to leave Afghanistan.”
“As we’ve said before, we will be relentless in this effort as we stand by our Afghan allies and their families,” the spokesperson said.
VOA State Department bureau chief Nike Ching and VOA Afghan Service’s Najiba Khalil contributed to this article.
After nearly 20 years of war, the U.S. and its allies left Afghanistan last August, helping to evacuate more than 130,000 Afghans in the chaotic last weeks in Kabul. Many of those Afghans hoped for a life in the U.S.
The U.S. offers few primary avenues for Afghans seeking entry. One is a decade-old special immigrant visa program for military interpreters and others who worked on government-funded contracts. Another is a refugee admission program run by the State Department in conjunction with other agencies. A third path is humanitarian parole.
Humanitarian parole is special permission given to those hoping to enter the United States under emergency circumstances. Though it does not automatically lead to permanent residency, “parolees” can apply for legal status—either through the asylum process or other forms of sponsorship, if available—once they’re in the U.S.
The Biden administration received more than 40,000 requests for humanitarian parole for Afghan nationals outside the U.S. So far 160 cases have been conditionally approved, per data sent to VOA by U.S. immigration officials.
An additional 930 cases have been denied, leaving thousands of Afghans who are seeking temporary entry into the U.S. stuck in Afghanistan and other countries.
Stringent criteria
Immigration attorney Mahsa Khanbabai, an elected director of the board of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and co-chair of AILA’s Afghan task force, said part of the problem is how the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) decides to whom they are going to give humanitarian parole.
“They have extremely stringent criteria, which is immensely problematic and upsetting for a lot of people because we expected the government to use … its broad discretion to grant parole,” Khanbabai told VOA. “… There’s an emergency situation here. There’s some humanitarian considerations. Let’s help these people out.”
For many at-risk Afghan civilians with no direct ties to the U.S. military or government, humanitarian parole is the only option to reach safety in the United States and reunite with family members.
“A great example is women judges and prosecutors,” Khanbabai said. “They were actually trained by U.S. lawyers … but they never worked for the U.S. government. They worked for the Afghan government. They don’t qualify for [a special immigrant visa]. … So humanitarian parole is really their next best option, and that’s one reason why we advocate so hard for [it].”
A spokesperson for USCIS told VOA that in a typical year, the agency receives fewer than 2,000 requests for humanitarian parole from all nationalities. Of those requests, about 500 to 700 are approved. There are numerous reasons for rejection, but most often it’s because the applicant could not prove they were in an emergency situation.
Additionally, the spokesperson said, the U.S. government has increased the number of officers working on parole cases to assist with the surge in requests and improve processing times.
But the official said humanitarian parole is not intended to replace the refugee processing channels, such as the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which is the typical pathway for individuals outside of the United States who have fled their country of origin and are seeking protection.
“USCIS reviews the specific facts of each case to determine if there is a distinct, well-documented reason to approve humanitarian parole for an individual,” the spokesperson said.
They do, however, recognize the U.S. refugee program is not always an option.
“In some limited circumstances, protection needs are so urgent that obtaining protection via the USRAP is not a realistic option. This, along with other, multiple factors are taken into consideration when USCIS assesses whether urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit parole warrants a favorable exercise of discretion,” USCIS spokesperson said.
Among the criteria to be considered for parole, an applicant is usually an immediate family member of a U.S. citizen or a U.S. lawful permanent resident. Or was a formally employed staff member in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul or an immediate family member of a locally employed staff member.
It also requires an application fee of $575.
VOA spoke with Noori, a former diversity visa winner living in a camp in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, who said he is now trying to get a visa to go to Germany or Canada with his family. For now, he has no hope they will live in the U.S. because they cannot afford the fee.
“We have no money for humanitarian parole,” he wrote in a text message. Noori, like many Afghans, uses only one name.
‘Imminent severe harm’
In November, USCIS added to the list of criteria for Afghan applicants and hosted a webinar to explain to attorneys that humanitarian parole is normally given only if the applicant shows evidence of “imminent severe harm.”
But, as Khanbabai said, it is difficult for the applicants to meet the “imminent severe harm” bar.
“They’re saying that, ‘You haven’t proven to us that there’s individualized threat or harm.’ So, [the U.S. government] essentially made the standard almost more difficult than an asylum case. … Basically ‘Where’s your letter from the Taliban saying that they want you to report to their offices because of the XYZ activities you engaged in,'” she said.
In January, 15 senators wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas expressing concern over the reported high denial rates for Afghans seeking humanitarian parole into the United States.
“While we have always maintained that proper vetting is an essential part of the humanitarian parole process, we are greatly concerned that the Administration is holding Afghan nationals seeking humanitarian parole to an unreasonably high standard, creating barriers to safe haven in the United States,” the senators, all Democrats, wrote.
Demonstrators in Afghanistan’s capital Saturday condemned President Joe Biden’s order freeing up $3.5 billion in Afghan assets held in the U.S. for families of America’s 9/11 victims, saying the money belongs to Afghans.
Protesters gathered outside Kabul’s grand Eid Gah mosque asked America for financial compensation for the tens of thousands of Afghans killed during the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan.
Biden’s order, signed Friday, allocates another $3.5 billion in Afghan assets for humanitarian aid to a trust fund to be managed by the U.N. to provide aid to Afghans. The country’s economy is teetering on the brink of collapse after international money stopped coming into Afghanistan with the arrival in mid-August of the Taliban.
Afghanistan’s Central Bank called on Biden to reverse his order and release the funds to it, saying in a statement Saturday that they belonged to the people of Afghanistan and not a government, party or group.
Torek Farhadi, a financial adviser to Afghanistan’s former U.S.-backed government, questioned the U.N. managing Afghan Central Bank reserves. He said those funds are not meant for humanitarian aid but “to back up the country’s currency, help in monetary policy and manage the country’s balance of payment.”
He also questioned the legality of Biden’s order.
“These reserves belong to the people of Afghanistan, not the Taliban. … Biden’s decision is one-sided and does not match with international law,” Farhadi said. “No other country on Earth makes such confiscation decisions about another country’s reserves.”
White House officials said there is no simple way to make all the frozen assets available quickly to the Afghan people.
Victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and their families have legal claims against the Taliban and the $7 billion in the U.S. banking system. Courts would have to sign off before the release of humanitarian assistance money and decide whether to tap the frozen funds for paying out those claims.
In all, Afghanistan has about $9 billion in assets overseas, including the $7 billion in the United States. The rest is mostly in Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland.
“What about our Afghan people who gave many sacrifices and thousands of losses of lives?” asked the demonstration’s organizer, Abdul Rahman, a civil society activist.
Rahman said he planned to organize more demonstrations across the capital to protest Biden’s order.
“This money belongs to the people of Afghanistan, not to the United States. This is the right of Afghans,” he said.
Taliban political spokesperson Mohammad Naeem accused the Biden administration in a tweet late Friday of showing “the lowest level of humanity … of a country and a nation.”
Biden’s Friday order generated a social media storm with Twitter saying #USA_stole_money_from_afghan trending among Afghans. Tweets repeatedly pointed out that the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, not Afghans.
Obaidullah Baheer, a lecturer at the American University in Afghanistan and a social activist, tweeted: “Let’s remind the world that #AfghansDidntCommit911 and that #BidenStealingAfgMoney!”
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was brought to Afghanistan by Afghan warlords after being expelled from Sudan in 1996. Those same warlords would later ally with the U.S.-led coalition to oust the Taliban in 2001. However, it was Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar who refused to hand over bin Laden to the U.S. after the devastating 9/11 attacks that killed thousands.
Still, some analysts took to Twitter to question Biden’s order.
Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson Center, called Biden’s order to divert $3.5 billion away from Afghanistan “heartless.”
“It’s great that $3.5B in new humanitarian aid for Afghanistan has been freed up. But to take another $3.5B that belongs to the Afghan people, and divert it elsewhere—that is misguided and quite frankly heartless,” he tweeted.
Kugelman also said the opposition to Biden’s order crossed Afghanistan’s wide political divide.
“I can’t remember the last time so many people of such vastly different worldviews were so united over a US policy decision on Afghanistan,” he tweeted.
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