The Tragic Fate of the Afghan Interpreters the U.S. Left Behind
by Smithsonian Magazine
SWJ Blog Post | October 25, 2016 - 10:25am
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The Tragic Fate of the Afghan Interpreters the U.S. Left Behind by T.A. Frail; Photographs by Erin Trieb, Smithsonian Magazine
... 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.
But Congress has been unwilling this year to renew or expand the Afghan program, for a variety of reasons. Lawmakers have taken issue with the potential cost (an estimated $446 million over ten years for adding 4,000 visas). They have questioned why so many visas had yet to be issued. Some have registered concern over the number of immigrants coming into the United States and argued that a terrorist posing as an interpreter could slip into the country.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-tragic-fate-of-the-afghan-interpreters-the-us-left-behind
