'We Need Our Voice to Be Heard': Afghan Resettlement Efforts Unfinished 2 Years After Withdrawal

Lucky's halal market in Fort Worth, Texas, transforms into a community center for Afghan refugees a few times a month.

Community leaders help others fill out immigration paperwork, translate documents from English and listen to their neighbors' struggles getting work authorization or supporting their families.

Normally, Lucky, who goes by a pseudonym to protect family members remaining in Afghanistan, feels like the U.S. government doesn't hear the community's concerns. For example, many of the Afghans in Lucky's community have applied to renew their soon-to-expire work authorization but have yet to get a response from immigration officials, he said.

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"To be honest with you, we don't get any response from the government authorities," said Lucky, a former translator for the U.S. military who immigrated to the U.S. in 2017 but returned to Afghanistan in 2021 to help his ailing mother. He was evacuated by U.S. forces after the Taliban overran Kabul.

But last week, a Biden administration official was there to listen.

"It did bring a positive effect for these people," Lucky said of the official's visit to Texas, expressing confidence that last week's meetings will see results. "We are hoping to hear something back from them, or if they can at least expedite their process. Because if they don't get their work authorization on time, all of them will be jobless and they will be homeless."

Two years ago, the U.S. ended its longest war in a cloud of chaos as U.S. military forces rushed to evacuate as many vulnerable people as possible before the last troops withdrew. But efforts to resettle Afghans whose lives were threatened by the Taliban's return to power are far from over.

The Biden administration touts its work over the last two years as a success, but Afghans and refugee advocates describe a more mixed picture.

For those who were fortunate enough to be evacuated during the withdrawal, many are struggling to find stability amid a drawn-out political fight in Washington, D.C., over their legal status. And hundreds of thousands of Afghans who are eligible to come to the U.S. are still waiting for approval to do so.

As of March, nearly 152,000 Afghans are at some stage in the application process for a Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, according to the State Department's most recent quarterly report on the program. The SIV program was created by Congress in 2009 to provide a pathway for Afghans who helped the U.S. military to immigrate to the U.S.

Separate refugee programs for Afghans known as Priority 1 and Priority 2 visas have about 27,400 applicants in the pipeline, according to the Associated Press.

Between the end of the withdrawal and this June, more than 24,000 Afghans have been resettled in the U.S. and third countries, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in June.

Combined with those hurriedly evacuated during the withdrawal, the U.S. has resettled a total of 115,000 Afghans here in the last two years, Curtis Ried, chief of staff at the National Security Council, told Military.com in a recent interview.

It was Ried who personally met with Lucky and other Afghan community leaders in Texas last week.

Most of the Afghans brought to the U.S. during the withdrawal were granted a temporary immigration status known as humanitarian parole. The parole was granted for two years, meaning it is on the verge of expiring.

Despite the deadline, Congress has been unable to agree on a bill to give the evacuees legal permanent residency. So the Biden administration is allowing Afghans to apply to extend their parole, which brings with it work authorization.

But as highlighted by Lucky, the renewal process has brought its own challenges to Afghans.

Much of the administration's resettlement efforts since the end of the chaotic withdrawal have been done in partnership with the veteran-led #AfghanEvac coalition, an umbrella organization for hundreds of nongovernmental groups that helped during the evacuation and are continuing to help vulnerable Afghans.

The partnership is what facilitated Ried's Texas meeting.

"Engagements like what we did in Texas, with Curtis Ried coming in, all of himself as the NSC chief of staff, and then taking it back and taking swift action, that's the kind of s**t that makes a difference in real human lives," Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran and president of #AfghanEvac, said in an interview with Military.com.

VanDiver also credited the administration for processing more visas more quickly, citing what he described as a 300% increase in capacity at processing sites worldwide.

In his interview with Military.com, Ried touted the administration's progress in cutting down processing time for SIV and refugee applications from years to "as little as" 60 days, setting up more locations around the world to process applications, and establishing a system for family reunifications.

But he also acknowledged that, as he heard from the Afghans during his Texas trip, messaging from the government on how to apply for asylum or renew humanitarian parole has been confusing -- something he said officials have already started working on clarifying since he returned from his trip.

Feedback from veterans has also been vital to the administration's work, he said.

"They've been very helpful with kind of real-time feedback, because many of them are in touch with their former interpreter, former driver, etc.," Ried said. "Telling us something isn't working on the ground in Afghanistan, highlighting some of the family reunification challenges that specific individuals have been having has been just helpful in terms of tweaking the populations we're trying to reach out to and focus on relocating."

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, described the administration's resettlement efforts since the withdrawal as a mixed bag. While she said she thinks there have been significant efforts to provide support to Afghans who made it to the U.S., work getting all the Afghans who helped during the war to safety is still "far from complete."

While the U.S. refugee system in general moves too slowly, she said, Afghans face some unique challenges.

"It's been difficult with clients who have destroyed or misplaced paperwork in the shuffle to try to present their cases," she said. "The administration has said that it's a priority. But more work needs to be done to actually provide pathways to the U.S.

"One of the major hurdles has been the lack of humanitarian infrastructure, even outside of Afghanistan, so in places where displaced Afghans have gravitated towards," she added. "The Department of State currently funds and manages eight refugee support centers around the world. Unfortunately, those aren't easily accessible to Afghans who have fled to neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan."

As resettlement efforts continue, the administration has been working over the last year to move away from the emergency footing of the withdrawal and immediate aftermath to a more sustainable, long-term effort for the next decade or longer. That includes ensuring there are multiple avenues for Afghans who want to leave their country to do so, multiple locations in third countries to process visa and refugee applications, and a "robust" system to provide support such as housing when Afghans arrive in the U.S., Ried said.

"People will continue to qualify for Special Immigrant Visas, for reunification, benefits for certain refugee programs, for years to come," Ried said. "I don't want to put a specific deadline on it, but we want to set something up that can continue on for as long as it's necessary."

Among the most important work that still needs to be done, Afghans, advocates and the administration agreed: Congress passing the Afghan Adjustment Act.

The bill would provide a pathway for Afghans living in the U.S. under humanitarian parole to apply to become legal permanent residents. It would also take steps to streamline the SIV process and expand eligibility for the visas.

Efforts to pass the bill last year stalled amid GOP concerns that security vetting measures for evacuated Afghans were not strong enough. More recently, a push to get the measure attached to this year's annual defense policy bill when the Senate voted on it last month was stymied by Republicans who wanted to include a proposal by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to limit future use of humanitarian parole.

"Back in August of 2021, there were a whole bunch of politicians that said, 'We stand with you. We're going to help you. We're going to help meet our American promise to our wartime allies.' I have a handy-dandy checklist that I can look at to see who's full of s**t and who's not," VanDiver said, referring to a list of lawmakers who support the Afghan Adjustment Act. "Veterans, frontline civilians and our Afghan allies, we're not tricked by this bulls**t. We need them to show up for us."

Without a permanent solution to their immigration status, any success Afghan refugees have found in the last two years with getting a job, finding housing and supporting their families risks being ripped away, Lucky said.

"We need our voice to be heard," Lucky said. "We're not asking too much for anything. Just proper documentation so these guys can work."

-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at rebecca.kheel@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.

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