The chaos in Kabul will forever stain President Biden’s legacy, but he’s not the only one who is harming America’s reputation for constancy and honor. See the immigration restrictionists calling for the betrayal of U.S. allies in their moment of great need.
The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program creates a path to permanent U.S. residency for locals who worked with the U.S. government in Afghanistan. After at least a year of service—and a vetting process that can take years—a qualified Afghan can bring his spouse and children to America if he is “experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a consequence of such employment.” Anyone who worked with the U.S. now faces such a threat from the Taliban if he remains in Afghanistan.
Americans who served alongside these Afghans know they were crucial to the U.S. mission. Without local guides to language and mores, more Americans would have died. Hundreds of translators and their family members have been killed for assisting the U.S., in addition to the 66,000 members of the Afghan military and police who have died in the war.
The priority of U.S. forces in Afghanistan should be to rescue and extract trapped Americans. But the U.S. also has a duty to thousands of Afghans who are in mortal danger. The Biden Administration is rightly attempting to evacuate SIV applicants, often to third countries where they will wait for a visa decision.
The SIV program has deep bipartisan support, but it’s not unanimous. Last month the U.S. House passed, 407-16, a bill to allocate an additional 8,000 visas for translators. The no votes came exclusively from Republicans.
For the record, they are: Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Jody Hice of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Barry Moore of Alabama, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Bill Posey of Florida, Matt Rosendale of Montana and Chip Roy of Texas.
Former Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Politico that “most of the translators that we’ve worked with and most of the government operators we’ve worked with, who wanted to leave and who meet the conditions for the program, already have left.” President Biden has repeated a similar falsehood. The SIV program has a backlog of some 20,000 applicants, and thousands of others could be eligible.
Political operatives like Mr. Miller speak about these Afghans as if they were freeloaders. Yet their greatest advocates are veterans. “These interpreters risked their lives and their families’ lives by aiding the U.S. military,” Daniel Elkins, a Green Beret and Afghanistan veteran, said in June. “If we abandon our side of the commitment now, people in the future will be less willing to work with us.” Even die-hard Trump supporter Rep. Matt Gaetz said he supported the SIV bill because “there are people over there who have kept my constituents alive.”
Recalling the violence in Europe after the 2014-15 migrant surge, some Americans may have good-faith concerns about terrorism or cultural differences. Attacks by Taliban spies who worked with the coalition killed dozens of troops during the war, and Kandahar isn’t Kansas. We also worry about the Administration’s competence.
But Europe had to cope with millions of unvetted migrants.These are thousands of people who proved they work well with Americans. They aren’t Muslim extremists; they are fleeing Muslim extremists. The thousands of Afghans who already made it to the U.S. through the SIV program haven’t always had an easy time, but they haven’t caused havoc.
GOP hostility to these Afghans is also a political mistake. How large is the constituency for betraying allies? Voters know the difference between lawlessness on the southern U.S. border and Afghans who earned the right to emigrate in a lawful program.
Conservatives claim to believe in American exceptionalism, and they once took pride in welcoming exiles from authoritarian lands. They still court the votes of Cuban, Venezuelan, Korean and Vietnamese immigrants—all as American as anyone. Afghans who fought with us deserve no less.
Journal Editorial Report: Paul Gigot interviews Gen. Jack Keane on the evacuation. Image: U.S. Army/Sgt. 1st Class Corey Vandiver/Handout via Reuters The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition
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August 20, 2021 at 05:36AM
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The Right and Our Afghan Allies - The Wall Street Journal
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