Posted on 08/19/2021 5:47:54 AM PDT by daniel1212
3,000 Afghan Civilian Translators Left behind
Lucy Fisher, the Defence Correspondent of the Times, recently highlighted the ‘hollow promises’ made by the U.K. Government to Afghan translators. In her July 2020 article she stated that British forces employed some 7,000 Afghan civilians of which around 3,500 were translators on active duty at the front-line with British forces.
She also listed the fact that 20 Afghan translators were killed on active duty and that 445 have been relocated into the U.K with their families, meaning that some 3,000 are still at risk of harm from an emboldened Taliban, now negotiating peace talks with the Afghan Government....
Nabi was found living on the streets of Athens in 2016. He had worked with British forces for 3 years in places like Helmand and had seen action under fire, translating key commands on the battlefield to move Afghan soldiers in partnership with British forces against Taliban extremists. Faith Matters staff saw the list of commendations and certificates that Nabi had received for bravery in the field and signed by serving British officers. We were also instrumental in getting journalists from the Sun newspaper, to highlight and back Nabi’s case for settlement into the United Kingdom. All of this activity has fallen on deaf ears in the Government....
We know that Nabi spent about 3 years in the field with British forces in major combat zones like Helmand. We also know through documented evidence, that he was good at his job, reliable and praised by British army commanders.
We also know that he left behind his family and his children in Afghanistan, so as to reduce the risk to them by the Taliban, though they have been and continue to be at risk of harm as the Taliban seeks a place in the Government. Additionally, the Taliban have always regarded those who worked with ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and British forces, as traitors and liable to summary execution. They have also threatened to target their families on numerous occasions.
What we are also aware of, is how the British Government, left behind some 6,500 Afghan civilians who had worked with British forces through a tiny textual caveat in the ‘Afghan Relocation Offer‘. Within this scheme, the Government cites that locally employed (Afghan) staff must have been,
Repeated threats against Nabi and his family meant that he left the employment of the Ministry of Defence in 2014. Whilst he fits two out of the three criteria listed above, one simple phrase – that of ‘redundancy’, has severely impacted his life. He was not made redundant. He left because of legitimate fears around the lives of his family and to his life
The People We Leave Behind in Afghanistan
Hundreds of interpreters have been killed over the years in Afghanistan and Iraq, including those who were waiting in agonizingly long visa-processing backlogs. The stories of loyal allies left in danger has rightly stoked public empathy. Countless articles, books and organizations have rallied support for their safe passage to the United States.
WaPO , November 10, 2013
KABUL — A growing number of Afghan interpreters who worked alongside American troops are being denied U.S. visas allotted by Congress because the State Department says there is no serious threat against their lives.
There are tons of Talibs in my village, and they all know that I worked with the Americans,” said one interpreter, Mohammad, who asked that his last name not be published for security reasons. “If I can’t go to the States, my life is over. I swear to God, one day the Taliban will catch me.”
Townhall May 29, 2015
Apologies for ending the week with such a downer of a story, but this man's story and grisly fate deserves to be told. America owes him that, at least, given how terribly we failed him:
An Afghan interpreter for the United States military who had been waiting for over four years on the U.S. visa list was tortured and killed by insurgents earlier this year, raising concerns that other translators could meet a similar fate as American forces withdraw from Afghanistan. Sakhidad Afghan worked as a translator for the U.S. Marines and Air Force since around 2008. Four years ago, he applied for a U.S. visa under a program for at-risk military translators. He was still on the waiting list when the Taliban reportedly kidnapped him from a bazaar this spring and executed him in the back of a trailer truck. Each year, thousands of Afghan interpreters under threat from anti-American militants sit in bureaucratic limbo, waiting for visas they were promised by the U.S. military
Awful: Afghan Interpreter Awaiting US Visa Tortured and Murdered by Taliban
Smithsonian Magazine November 2016
Sakhidad Afghan was 19 when he started working as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, in 2009. His father was sick and he wanted to help support their extended family of 18. In his first year, he saw combat with the Marines in the Battle of Marjah, but he remained an interpreter until the fall of 2014, when American troops drew down and his job disappeared. By then he’d received an anonymous death threat over the phone, so he’d applied for a special visa to live in the United States. He’d been in the application pipeline for three years when, in March 2015, he went to see about a new interpreting job in Helmand.
Days later, one of his brothers got a phone call from a cousin, asking him to come over and look at a picture that had been posted on Facebook. The picture was of Sakhidad; he had been tortured and killed and left by the side of the road. He was 24. A letter bearing the Taliban flag was found stuffed into a pants pocket. It warned that three of his brothers, who also worked for coalition forces, were in for the same.
The visa that Sakhidad Afghan was waiting for was intended as a lifeline for interpreters who are threatened. Congress approved the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) [The total number of principal applicants who can receive SIV status under this program may not exceed 50 per fiscal year] program in 2009, and some 9,200 Afghans have received an SIV, along with 17,000 of their dependents. But the number of visas has lagged behind the demand, as has the pace at which the State Department awarded them. By law, an application is supposed to be processed within nine months; it often takes years. And now, unless Congress extends the program, it will close to applicants at the end of this year. An estimated 10,000 interpreters may be left vulnerable—a prospect that the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson, warned could “bolster the propaganda of our enemies.”
The United States has a history of modifying immigration laws to take in foreigners who aided its overseas aims and came to grief for it—a few thousand nationalist Chinese after the 1949 Communist takeover of China, 40,000 anti-communist Hungarians after the failed rebellion against Soviet dominance in 1956, some 130,000 South Vietnamese in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War in 1975. An SIV program for Iraqi interpreters, closed to applicants in 2014, has delivered about 17,300 visas.
Abajournal.com, September 1, 2017
In a sense, Qismat Amin’s high school English has served him well. In another sense, it nearly got him killed.
When the U.S. Army came to Afghanistan, Amin—then 19 years old—was hired as an interpreter. He spent three years, from 2010 to 2013, helping American soldiers communicate with locals in eastern Afghanistan’s rural Shinwari district, where his family has roots.
But after the Americans left, the Taliban moved back in and threatened to kill people who had worked for the United States. So in late 2012, Amin applied for a special immigrant visa under a program for Afghans and Iraqis whose lives are threatened because they’ve worked with the U.S. The intent is to resettle them out of danger, and recipients are granted lawful permanent residency (green cards) on arrival.
Amin had an SIV interview in early 2013—right on schedule. But then his application was passed to a series of federal agencies for security checks. And there it stayed. And stayed. And stayed—for years.
“Every time when I email[ed] the embassy, they [told] me, ‘Sir, your visa status is in administrative processing, and you have to wait,’” Amin says.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State group had moved into eastern Afghanistan—and its members didn’t like American collaborators any more than the Taliban did. One night, they broke down the door of some of Amin’s relatives in the Shinwari district, looking for him. They didn’t find him, but they stole all of his family’s crops.
“They said, ‘We can give them back if he gets back and talks to us and tells us: Hey, I’m not working for America anymore,’” says Amin. “But ... obviously this is like a trap, and they just wanted me to come over and kill me...”
According to the State Department, the average government processing time for Afghan applicants was 480 days as of April. That’s up from 270 days the previous year. For Iraqis, the average wait time as of April was 305 days, up from 269 a year ago. By far the longest step was the security checks, called “administrative processing” by State and “a bureaucratic black hole” by Ball. Though security checks are an essential part of the process, advocates for SIV applicants say they can stretch out for years, putting applicants’ lives in danger.
Houston Chronicle Aug. 16, 2021
On Monday, President Joe Biden defended his decision to complete the pullout of U.S. troops by Sept. 11, a process set in motion by a 2020 agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration. Biden, a longtime critic of the war in Afghanistan, said he would “not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past.”...Officials from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense said they would shift thousands of additional troops to secure the airport and evacuate American citizens and other “particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals” and to “accelerate the evacuation of thousands of Afghans eligible for U.S. Special Immigrant Visas,” such as former or current interpreters and their family members. About 2,000 have arrived in the U.S. over the past two weeks, but experts estimate some 88,000 remain in the country...
Local veterans were working Monday to try to assist many of the men and women who’d worked alongside them during long deployments. As the war has dragged on, interpreters have spent years struggling to navigate the bureaucratic process necessary to come to the U.S....
Sayed Hussaini, 31, moved to Houston in 2015 after four years working with American service members. He left after Taliban insurgents targeted his brother, killing him with a roadside bomb. Now Hussaini lives in Houston with his wife, but his parents and five siblings remain in Afghanistan.
“The situation surprised everyone,” he said. He’d assumed his parents had a few weeks, that they would have time to get their visas and get out of the country.
Then, they woke up to find the Taliban in the streets, the government collapsed and American troops holed up in the airport.
While immigrants coming thru the Southern border seem to face far less restrictions, the danger for Democrats is that those from Cuba and former employees of the US military are far more likely to end up voting Republican, while commitment of the latter to security has hindered those former employees from immigrating.
If these people truly want a democratic republic, they would stay and conduct a gorilla war against the new government (Taliban).
If the translators need to be resettled, resettle them in a muslim country in the Middle East which will be much closer both geographically and culturally.
It is insane to bring them here.
agreed
We’ve already brought about 50,000 translators to the U.S. and, as Daniel Greenfield points out on Frontpage.com the maximum number of troops we ever had in Afghanistan was 100,000. That’s one translator for every two troops.Did every Afghan spend a week as an American translator?
Source: https://vdare.com/articles/ann-coulter-afghanistan-joe-vs-swamp-except-he-s-bringing-translators-here
So all one has to do is say he is a "translator" and that is a free ticket to the U.S. with his six wives and 14 children?
Appears so.
That, or show up on our Southern border and you don't even need a reason to be granted entry on a silver platter. In just 6 months Biden has been incredibly successful at tearing down and apart this country. And worse, our supposed representation on the other side is hanging out at the Congressional tea and barber shops not doing one damn thing to stop this. I expect this from Marxist Dems, not the GOP, that's who I am upset with.
I’m not sure of your source, but Afghan interpreters can’t get an SIV unless they have at least 2 years of interpreting time with US government. And even then, very, very difficult to get an SIV even with verification of service. Many members of military working tirelessly to bring over interpreters who worked for them courageously and can not get an SIV.
'Saving Afghan Interpreters' is a Scam That Would Bring 100,000 Afghans to U.S.
The “interpreter” scam is one of the longest running immigration hoaxes on record.
But the vast majority of “interpreters” aren’t interpreters. They were “Afghan allies” working in some capacity with or for the United States. While the media keeps talking about 20,000 “interpreters” embedded with American forces, hardly any of the SIV applicants fall into that category. Applicants didn't even have to work for the United States. They could have worked for any of the over 50 countries taking part in the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. Not to mention any of the local subcontractors or aid groups that were being funded by the United States.
Source:
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/saving-afghan-interpreters-scam-would-bring-100000-daniel-greenfield/
That 50,000 figure is not is one translator for every two troops, but i will have to get back to this thread later.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/12/11/afghans-who-worked-for-u-s-government-make-up-growing-share-of-special-immigrant-visa-recipients/
Wrong. First, the 50k figure is for special immigrant visas which covers 19 different classes, with Iraqi and Afghan interpreters/translators being just one of them.
Second, 775,000 U.S. troops fought in the Afghanistan war
Third, the 50k special immigrant visas that have gone to Afghans since fiscal 2007 is over the course of 20 years, meaning an average of less than 3k per year. And there are more immigrants and more refugees from countries as Burma and Eritrea in the US than Afghanistan (2019).
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/ft_2020.08.20_immigrants_06.png
And nothing compared to
Meanwhile 3.6 million babies were born in the United States last year.
" So all one has to do is say he is a "translator" and that is a free ticket to the U.S. with his six wives and 14 children?"
Far from it. If you read the article excerpts you would see that
According to the State Department, the average government processing time for Afghan applicants was 480 days as of April. That’s up from 270 days the previous year. For Iraqis, the average wait time as of April was 305 days, up from 269 a year ago. By far the longest step was the security checks, called “administrative processing” by State and “a bureaucratic black hole” by Ball. Though security checks are an essential part of the process, advocates for SIV applicants say they can stretch out for years, putting applicants’ lives in danger. - https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/afghan_iraqi_interpreters_immigration
By March 2021, 100,000 Afghans and Iraqis had been approved for SIVs….When the media claims that we’re leaving Afghan interpreters to die, it’s lying. There are few actual interpreters actually applying for SIVs. The vast majority of applicants were just making money from the U.S.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/saving-afghan-interpreters-scam-would-bring-100000-daniel-greenfield/The visa inflation is driven by family members. Of the 100,000 SIV immigrants, 31,000 were the actual applicants, while another 69,000 were family members. The current list of applicants in the pipeline breaks down to 700 "interpreters" or principal applicants and 1,800 family members.
With 20,000 principal Afghanistan applicants, that means we could easily be looking at over 60,000 total Afghan immigrants in the short term. And the numbers may go as high as 100,000.
The long term numbers under family reunification programs would be absolutely staggering.
What's the problem with brining large numbers of Afghan refugees to the U.S.?
Let's look to Austria and what happened there when they allowed in Afghan refugees:
I’ve Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe’s Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Boggling.
Afghans stand out among the refugees committing crimes in Austria and elsewhere. Why?
But there was one development that had not been expected, and was not tolerable: the large and growing incidence of sexual assaults committed by refugees against local women. These were not of the cultural-misunderstanding-date-rape sort, but were vicious, no-preamble attacks on random girls and women, often committed by gangs or packs of young men.At first, the incidents were downplayed or hushed up—no one wanted to provide the right wing with fodder for nationalist agitation, and the hope was that these were isolated instances caused by a small problem group of outliers. As the incidents increased, and because many of them took place in public or because the public became involved either in stopping the attack or in aiding the victim afterwards, and because the courts began issuing sentences as the cases came to trial, the matter could no longer be swept under the carpet of political correctness. And with the official acknowledgment and public reporting, a weird and puzzling footnote emerged. Most of the assaults were being committed by refugees of one particular nationality: by Afghans.
Read the rest of it here, PLEASE.
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2021/07/16/austrias-afghan-refugee-problem-will-it-be-our-problem-soon/
I am not OK with this and I hope you aren't either.
This is my final post on this thread. Freegards, Bon
You are supposed to interact with my response, which shows that your parroted assertions are wrong.
"By March 2021, 100,000 Afghans and Iraqis had been approved for SIVs….When the media claims that we’re leaving Afghan interpreters to die, it’s lying."
Since you ignore the substantiated fact that interpreters make up only a small part of the 19 subgroups within this SIV category and that as testified to, Afghan interpreters have been left to die (which the media wants to blame Trump for) then it leaves you as lying.
Moreover, even the 100k immigrants is over the course of 20 years, meaning an average of 5k a year, which pales in comparison to other countries.
In 2018, the top country of origin for new immigrants coming into the U.S. was China, with 149,000 people, followed by India (129,000), Mexico (120,000) and the Philippines (46,000). In In fiscal 2019, only 1,198 came from Afghanistan. - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/
Yet Trump is called racist.
" What's the problem with brining large numbers of Afghan refugees to the U.S.?"
I am not promoting bringing relatively large numbers of criminal Afghan refugees to the U.S., but advocating for any who did work as interpreters or otherwise for our government and are facing death due to that.
". Most of the assaults were being committed by refugees of one particular nationality: by Afghans. Read the rest of it here, PLEASE. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2021/07/16/austrias-afghan-refugee-problem-will-it-be-our-problem-soon/ I am not OK with this and I hope you aren't either."
No, and thank you for the information. It would have helped if the religion of such was also named though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.