The Mission Essential Personnel Heart Award belonging to a Special Immigrant Visa applicant.
Photo:
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Muhammad Kamran
worked for years for the U.S. military and its contractors and with the United Nations in Afghanistan. He was forced to flee in 2014 when his home was torched and his family shot at. He now lives illegally in Pakistan in fear that the Taliban will track and kill him. His opportunity to escape narrowed last week, and Congressional inaction is to blame.
Lawmakers failed to renew the Afghan special immigrant visa (SIV) program as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, the standard vehicle for extending it. Established in 2009, the program provides a path to U.S. citizenship for Afghans who worked closely with the U.S. government, military and contractors, as well as their immediate family.
Only some 14,000 SIVs were available as of November, and some 63,000 Afghans have pending applications, though not all may be approved. Estimates vary, but as many as 200,000 Afghans who supported the U.S. mission remain at risk of Taliban retribution in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
No One Left Behind, a nonprofit that supports former Iraqi and Afghan interpreters and other U.S. government employees, estimates that at least 285 Afghans have been killed while waiting for SIVs. The killings were reported by the victims’ family and friends and haven’t been independently verified.
Mr. Kamran says a former colleague had his hands, feet, ears and nose cut off before he was murdered. Another SIV applicant was shot to death in September 2022, leaving behind a widow and a newborn son, according to No One Left Behind. (We agreed to withhold his name out of safety concerns for his family.) The victim’s sister-in-law was also slain in the shooting, and his brother was wounded.
Fearful of a similar fate, Mr. Kamran, his wife, four daughters and son don’t leave their house in Pakistan. A…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RSSOpinion…