After surviving multiple bomb attacks while translating for US troops during the bloodiest fighting of the Iraq occupation, Hayder – who has asked the Guardian not to use his real name – has a plane ticket for Texas that he may yet never use, thanks to President Donald Trump. They are just two of the millions of people affected by Trump’s de facto ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, which was stayed by a New York federal judge on Saturday until a hearing on 21 February. Farah Alkhafji, who endured the killing of her husband, the burning of her house, the kidnapping of her father, was weeks away from taking her US citizenship test. Now she fears she will never see her Iraqi family again. It appears unlikely that stay will apply to Hayder and Alkhafji. They are two people who sacrificed their safety on behalf of an America that on Friday slammed its doors in their faces. “I am very grateful for each and every day I experience democracy and freedom in this great country,” said Alkhafji in a phone interview on Saturday night, as she worried about the health of her 67-year old father, with whom in Iraq she operated a concrete company providing material for the T-walls and barriers protecting US bases and checkpoints. For five years, Alkhafji said, her father has attempted to get into the US, along with her mother and two sisters. She has no idea of what has happened to visa status.
Read the whole thing here.
And while you’re at it, read Jay Nordlinger’s re-post of an article he wrote at National Review in 2015 focusing on the struggle of many Iraqi war veterans who couldn’t obtain visas from the Obama administration:
In 2008, Ryan Crocker, then serving as U.S. ambassador in Iraq, met with a group of visiting journalists. He addressed the question of public opinion back home. “People are tired of Iraq,” he said. “They say, ‘Let’s get it over and done with. We don’t want to watch the Iraq movie anymore.’ But the Iraq movie will go on for many more reels, with or without us. And it will have a big effect on us, whether we like it or not.” There is another reel in the movie, so to speak. Or a late scene in the movie. In February, a lawsuit was filed in a U.S. district court on behalf of nine Iraqis who helped American forces in the war. The lives of those Iraqis are in grave danger. ISIS and other such elements are threatening to kill them for the help they rendered us Americans. According to U.S. law, the threatened Iraqis are entitled to visas, and refuge in America. But they have not received what they are due. The nine are being represented by the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project and a law firm, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. IRAP was founded in 2008 by a group of Yale Law School students (one of whom was a veteran of the Iraq and Afghan wars). They have helped to resettle more than 3,000. I regard IRAP as a “point of light,” to borrow language from the first President Bush. On behalf of the nine Iraqis, IRAP and Freshfields are suing Secretary of State John Kerry and his department, and Security of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and his department. These are the people charged with carrying out the SIV program, established by Congress in 2008. “SIV” stands for “Special Immigrant Visas.” These visas are intended to go to Iraqis who helped U.S. forces and are now threatened with death for it — in other words, Iraqis exactly like the nine. Frustrated with bureaucratic slowness, Congress issued a further instruction in 2013: Visa applications should be acted on within nine months.
Meanwhile, keep an eye on THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s John McCormack as he sorts through some of the confusion surrounding how Iraqis wade through the new entry restrictions. Sunday’s dispatch clarified that Iraqis who are currently training with U.S. troops would be eligible to enter the country to receive training. The White House told McCormack, “All such admissions are in the national interest and would qualify.”
