New York Times (Op-Ed)
By Ernesto Londono
March 1, 2016
The latest blunder in the government’s management of a special visa program for Afghan interpreters was fixed this week.
In
recent months, some Afghan interpreters were stunned to learn that
their visa applications had been denied as a result of the way officials
at the State Department
and the Department of Homeland Security were interpreting a change to
the eligibility criteria Congress made last year.
Last
fall, lawmakers established that as of September 30, in order to
qualify for resettlement in the United States, interpreters would need
to provide evidence that they
had worked for American personnel in Afghanistan for at least two
years. In the past, they had to prove only one year of service.
Inexplicably,
the government began applying the two-year standard to applicants who
had submitted petitions long before the rule changed.
There
are two main stages in the process, which often takes years. Applicants
must first submit a petition at the embassy in Kabul. Those who get the
green light there
may then submit a visa application with the Department of Homeland
Security. The change could have disqualified hundreds of the more than
10,000 applicants with pending cases.
A
Feb. 4 editorial in The Times called the retroactive implementation of
the two-year requirement unreasonable and urged Secretary of State John
Kerry to undo it.
Citing
the editorial, a handful of senators who have championed the program
wrote a letter on Feb. 11 to Mr. Kerry and Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of
Homeland Security,
expressing concern about the change.
“As
the authors of that provision, we urge you to reconsider your
interpretation as it is wholly inconsistent with Congressional intent
and would unfairly and wrongly
disqualify hundreds of deserving applicants,” Senators Jeanne Shaheen,
Jack Reed and John McCain wrote in the letter.
Testifying
before the Senate recently, Mr. Kerry did not defend the retroactive
implementation of the rule, which he called “grossly unfair and
dangerous.”
He said State Department lawyers were reviewing the matter and that he hoped there would be a prompt resolution to the problem.
On Monday, the State Department notified Congress that the issue had been resolved.
Interpreters
who submitted applications with the embassy before Sept. 30 will have
to prove that they worked for the American government for one year, not
two, the State
Department said in an emailed statement. It said officials were
reviewing all cases that had been rejected solely as a result of the
two-year criterion and would “proactively reach out to these
individuals” to get their cases back on track.
Congress has tangled with the bureaucracy numerous times since it passed the Special Immigrant Visa program in 2009.
During
the early years of the program, the State Department only approved a
smattering of cases. It rejected some applicants by sending them letters
saying they posed
unspecified security risks. Many applicants waited for years without
news about their petitions.
In
2014, Mr. Kerry pledged to fix the problems but found that the State
Department was in a bind of its own making: With thousands of cases in
the pipeline, it had run
out of visas to issue because Congress had created a yearly cap and
those set aside for the early years of the program had expired.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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