A Just the News piece centered on plans to temporarily house 10,000 Afghan refugees at Ft. Bliss (assuming President Joe Biden (D) will deign move to help them escape in the first place) also had some information on how what requirements Afghanis must satisfy in order to be eligible for the Special Immigrant Visas that would allow them to enter the US.
- worked with US military or through the Chief of Mission authority as translators or interpreters in Iraq or Afghanistan
- provide a picture ID
- proof of a US military background check
- letter of recommendation
- filing fee of $435
- go through in-person interview at a US embassy or consulate
In the chaos of the collapse of Biden’s effort in Afghanistan—a chaos he’s said in plain terms that he knew would occur—and the parallel (!) collapse of Afghanistan, how will these Afghanis satisfy any of those criteria?
Where will they get the picture ID that having one of on their person puts them at immediate risk of butchery by Taliban thugs?
In what way will they prove the existence of a background check—especially in the face of the precipitous nature of Biden’s “retrograde?”
Where will they get those USD435—AFN37,500 and rising (as of 19 Aug) in the face of the Biden Retrograde?
At what US embassy or consulate will a prospective Afghani undergo his in-person interview?
What is Biden doing to reduce the already existing backlog of 10s of thousands of SIV applications already in his State Department’s pipeline?
What is Biden doing to streamline this cumbersome—even were all the pieces easily accessible—process?
It’s certainly critical that Afghan refugees be successfully sorted out from terrorists masquerading themselves as Afghan refugees before anyone is allowed into our nation, but it’s also clear that neither Biden nor anyone else in his Executive Branch (particularly his State and Defense Departments) are prepared to deal with this situation, or even are serious about catching up with their Afghan refugee crisis, much less their Afghanistan nation crisis.