Despite Tens of Thousands of Applications, Afghans Have No Clear Path to the United States
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is facing renewed criticism over the treatment of Afghans seeking refuge after reports that the agency approved fewer than 2% of Afghans who applied for humanitarian parole. Advocates have pointed not only to the abysmal grant rate but also to the disparate treatment afforded to Ukrainians by the same agency.
The new scrutiny comes at a time when USCIS announced that it would be ending the use of humanitarian parole for Afghans and instead shift its focus to “permanent resettlement.” Beginning on October 1, 2022, the United States plans to discontinue the use of parole for Afghans entering the United States. The use of parole allows individuals to enter the United States and bypass visa requirements or other processes that can often take years before entry is allowed. The Biden administration has claimed that the shift is an attempt to move away from emergency evacuations and develop long-term resettlement capabilities.
"Moving forward, Afghan arrivals will enter the United States with a durable, long-term immigration status that will facilitate their ability to settle and integrate into their new communities more quickly, and they will also travel directly to their new destination community without the need for a stop-over at a safe haven in the U.S.," an administration official told CBS news. However, the move has been met with skepticism by advocates, many of whom believe that the United States has failed to address the humanitarian crisis left in the wake of its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. One of the primary concerns centers on the fact that nearly 50,000 Afghans applied for humanitarian parole through USCIS, but most applications remain unadjudicated, and the majority have been rejected. In particular, advocates are outraged that USCIS collected tens of millions of dollars in fees for the applications, has denied the majority of cases, and has done little to set up an alternative path for Afghans who remain in the country. “The sheer magnitude of some of the failures, such as (nearly) $20 million in fees collected only to approve 123 applications, paints a more dire picture than perhaps we even realized,” Sunil Varghese, policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said in an email with Reveal News.
“The U.S. military and diplomatic presence in Afghanistan may have ended last August, but the U.S. government’s obligations to at-risk Afghans did not. These shockingly low processing numbers should serve as a reminder that the U.S. can and should do more.”Criticism of USCIS reached a peak during a talk at UCLA by the agency’s Director, Ur Jaddou. Students staged a walkout during her discussion of the topic, holding signs critiquing the failure of USCIS to adjudicate Afghan parole requests fairly. During the discussion, Jaddou was asked specific questions on the development of special programs for Ukrainians seeking entry to the United States when no such program was set up for Afghans. Students were not the only ones who have taken notice of the disparate treatment between Afghans and Ukrainians. U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, joined Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) in a letter to the Biden administration raising concerns over the inconsistent treatment of the two populations and calling for “an approach to Afghan parole applications that mirrors the new treatment of Ukrainian applications, including accelerating the processing of Afghan parole applications, waiving (or refunding) application fees, and not requiring a showing of targeted violence.
”The letter emphasized that applications by Ukrainians have been processed in an expedited manner and were received with no associated fees, while applications from Afghans have remained unadjudicated for months and have experienced higher denial rates. The letter also noted the requirements for Afghans to attend in-person consular interviews and fact-specific documentation attesting to their need for humanitarian parole, while Ukrainians face no such requirements. While the announcement by the Biden administration that it would be focused on permanent resettlement options for Afghans has been welcomed by some, advocates remain concerned about the fate of thousands of Afghans who have yet to receive a response to their pending humanitarian parole applications.
The administration has also touted the fact that it has successfully evacuated 80,000 Afghans to the United States. But advocates have noted that this does not take into account tens of thousands of Afghans who have filed applications with USCIS, asking for humanitarian parole. Many of whom have limited alternative options for resettlement. Speaking to Reveal News, Wogai Mohmand, co-founder of Project ANAR, a non-profit launched to assist thousands of Afghans applying for humanitarian parole, expressed skepticism of the announcement and noted that the policy shift “doesn’t help any of the Afghans that filed for parole or that remain in Afghanistan.”