President Joe Biden’s administration has eliminated a lengthy visa application form for Afghan allies seeking resettlement in the United States since the Taliban’s return to power.
“The elimination of this 19-page form will greatly ease the administrative burden on applicants and reduce processing time,” a senior administration official told reporters on Monday.
That simplification arose from a multi-agency effort “over the past year and a half” to accommodate people eligible for the Special Immigrant Visas provided to Afghans who were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government, the official said. The administration doesn’t have precise knowledge yet of how many Afghans will be able to obtain those visas, but government estimates suggest that about 165,000 former Afghan partners and their families already have begun the process.
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“This change does not reduce or remove any of the robust security vetting processes required before the benefit is granted,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday. “This is one of many steps we have taken to improve the SIV process while safeguarding national security. Since the beginning of the administration, we have surged resources to this vital program and have reviewed every stage of the statutorily required application process to streamline wherever possible.”
The fate of the Afghans who worked as interpreters or in other roles supporting U.S. forces before being left behind in the chaotic evacuation from Kabul last year has haunted many Americans who served in Afghanistan. Biden’s team faced domestic political backlash and drew contemptuous rebukes from European allies last year as the Taliban’s rapid reconquest of Afghanistan raised the specter of retaliation against American partners.
“The Biden administration remains committed to the thousands of brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with us and the United States over the course of the past two decades,” the first senior administration official said.
The procedural change takes effect on July 20. The outgoing document, Form I-360, is a petition for a Special Immigrant Visa typically filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That step in the process is being scrapped, as the administration has concluded that the law requiring an applicant to submit a formal petition is met when the applicant asks the State Department to confirm that he or she has the work experience that confers eligibility for the visa program, a certification known as chief of mission approval.
“This means that most SIV applicants will no longer have to deal with multiple federal government agencies to complete their SIV chief of mission approval and petition applications,” the senior administration official said.
The State Department had 74,274 applications “in the pipeline as of last week,” according to another senior administration official. As many as half of those applications likely will be rejected. About 11,000 of the applications have received chief of mission approval, meaning they “are essentially getting ready” to come to the U.S.
“That does not include family members. Usually, for family members, we count around four and a half, sort of an average multiplier effect that we’ve found for Afghan families. So, with the family members, that would be around 50,000 — 45 to 50,000 — depending on who they have on their forms.”
A conservative combination of those rules of thumb would lead to an estimate that 37,000 of the 74,000 applications will be approved, leading to the resettlement of 166,500 Afghan allies and their family members in the U.S. The administration expects the elimination of the USCIS form to “shave about a month off of” the time that Afghans wait to find out if their petition will be granted.
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“But I think what we anticipate seeing is the major impact here is that it’ll be a lot easier for the applicants as well,” the first senior administration official said.
