DAVENPORT, IOWA (October 13, 2022) — Following the chaotic US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, tens of thousands of US-affiliated and at-risk Afghans have been welcomed into the United States via humanitarian parole. Unlike immigrant visa or refugee programs, humanitarian parole is not a pathway to permanent status; it is a temporary allowance to enter and remain in the United States. As such, Afghans who have been or will enter the US with humanitarian parole under Operation Allies Welcome find themselves under a cloud of legal uncertainty.

The Afghan Adjustment Act offers an important correction by allowing Afghan parolees to apply for lawful permanent resident status after one year — the same legal status they would have received had they been admitted as refugees. This backgrounder details the ways in which the Afghan Adjustment Act would be of particular benefit to Afghan allies who qualify for the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) Program.

The Afghan Adjustment Act would: 

Erase years of legal uncertainty for SIV-qualified Afghan parolees

Even under stable conditions, the SIV program has always been a glacially-slow process, regularly blowing past the Congressionally-mandated nine-month adjudication requirement. SIV processing regularly takes years. The recent DHS report on Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) included tens of thousands of SIV applicants, eligible SIV family members, and Afghan allies who have not yet applied for SIVs but who the US government is confident are qualified based on initial evacuation and parole processing. For Afghan allies paroled into the US, the Afghan Adjustment Act would provide a much quicker and more reliable pathway to lawful status than initiating or continuing SIV processing.

Free up vital resources to assist SIV applicants left behind

In the absence of an Afghan Adjustment Act and a clear path to permanent status, tens of thousands of Afghan parolees will likely rely on the SIV program to provide an alternative path. This will consume tremendous amounts of government manpower and resources that could otherwise be dedicated to processing the tens of thousands of Afghan allies the US left behind. As detailed above, the SIV program is notoriously slow and bottlenecked, but for all its warts it has allowed thousands of Afghan allies to escape to safety in the United States. The Afghan Adjustment Act would allow the SIV program to serve the function for which Congress intended it rather than as a resource-intensive stand-in for adjustment.

Clear the pathway for continued evacuations of Afghan allies

One of the reasons the Biden Administration has given for the slow pace of post-withdrawal Afghan ally arrivals into the US is the absence of any clear pathway to permanent status for parolees. The White House is reportedly constructing an expedited US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) process in order for Afghan evacuees to be admitted as refugees already on a path to permanent status in lieu of paroling more Afghans into a haze of legal uncertainty. The Afghan Adjustment Act would solve this problem by putting every Afghan ally on a path to permanent status regardless of the particular legal mechanism by which they were granted entry to the United States.

Provide a Safety Valve for SIV Applicants

The Afghan SIV program is notorious for erroneously rejecting qualified applicants. The State Department does not publish transparent data regarding appeal-success rates, but anecdotal evidence collected by practitioners and Congressional offices over a decade suggests that denial appeals, COM-revocation appeals, and re-applications after initial denials, are successful at a substantial rate. In other words, even SIV-qualified Afghans cannot be sure that their applications will be correctly or efficiently adjudicated. The Afghan Adjustment Act would give every SIV-qualified Afghan parolee a clear and timely path to permanent status in the United States. Historical precedent suggests that if Congress fails to act, thousands of SIV-qualified Afghan allies will be erroneously denied the protections of the SIV program Congress created to help them.

Mitigate the impact of documentation lost during evacuation

In addition to the erroneous denials detailed above, the SIV program also burdens applicants with the responsibility of establishing their qualifying employment. This can mean collecting documentation from contractors that are noncompliant or no longer exist, or producing letters of recommendation from supervisors long out of touch or even deceased.  The chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan exacerbated the documentation problem for Afghan allies. The same documents required by the SIV program are a death warrant in the hands of the Taliban. During the operation at HKIA, the Taliban and other anti-US forces threatened, harassed, and beat people while searching for the same documents the SIV program required them to carry. Some Afghans destroyed those sensitive documents to protect their lives and their families. The US Embassy itself also destroyed important documentation for many Afghans to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Taliban. The Afghan Adjustment Act would avoid punishing Afghan allies for protecting themselves and their families during the evacuation.

Conclusion

The Afghan SIV program was the US Government’s promise to Afghans who risked their lives on behalf of the US mission in Afghanistan. That promise remains unfulfilled for tens of thousands of Afghan allies and their families still at-risk in Afghanistan and other unsafe countries, and the SIV program should continue serving that function until every qualified applicant is safe. The Afghan Adjustment Act would free up vital SIV-processing resources to fulfill that promise, while removing a cloud of uncertainty from the heads of those who have already risked everything to support the United States.

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