Is Congress Failing Afghan Evacuees?

Abigail Hauslohner, Washington Post, Mar. 29, 2022

"Most Afghan evacuees fled with few, if any, belongings. Some were separated from immediate family members in the chaos. Many remain deeply traumatized. Then there is the larger, looming crisis that military veterans groups and refugee advocates are urging Congress to consider. About 95 percent of those brought to the United States were admitted under what the government calls humanitarian parole. It is a temporary legal status allowing them to live and work in the country but only for two years. ... Although Congress has in past decades approved legislation to fast-track green cards for other large populations of political refugees, including for Cubans in the 1950s and Southeast Asians in the ’70s, lawmakers have yet to approve a similar measure for Afghans. Advocates, including military veterans groups that worked behind the scenes to facilitate the evacuation of Afghans with whom U.S. troops served in combat, warn that without an “Afghan Adjustment Act” to provide them green cards, those rescued are at risk of a years-long bureaucratic struggle that few can afford. Equally worrisome, advocates say, those who fail in their asylum bids could lose their work authorization and become “undocumented immigrants” subject to deportation. “To not act to address the … uncertainty that they face is just adding insult to injury,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president and chief executive of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. “Our only plea is: to every political leader who stood up in August and said, ‘We must meet our pledge to these people,’ that there’s consistency, and that they also say we must provide refuge, which means permanent resettlement in the U.S. Because otherwise, we’re forcing them into statelessness.” "