USCIS Denies Over 90% of Afghan Humanitarian Parole Requests

Camilo Montoya, CBS News, June 20, 2022

"Since July 2021, USCIS has received over 46,000 applications from Afghans hoping to come to the U.S. through the parole process. But most parole applications from Afghans remain unresolved — and over 90% of fewer than 5,000 fully adjudicated requests have been denied, USCIS statistics shared with CBS News show. ... As of June 2, only 297 parole requests from Afghans had been approved by USCIS, while 4,246 requests had been rejected, according to the agency figures, which suggest that most of the tens of thousands of pending cases will be rejected under the standards being used by the U.S. government. ... As opposed to most U.S. immigration programs, which take months or years to process petitions, Uniting for Ukraine cases are being processed electronically in a matter of weeks or even days. In less than three months, 37,000 Ukrainians have been granted U.S. travel authorization and 11,000 have arrived, USCIS data show. "Processing one group's claims at a much lower evidentiary threshold, and at no cost, without doing so for the other is a jarring example of inequity," said Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. "This process is meant to save lives and reunite families — an applicant's fate shouldn't be dependent on their nationality.""