When the U.S. troops with whom he had patrolled side by side for months left at the end of their deployment, Zia stayed behind.
Zia was an Afghan translator who worked closely with U.S. forces during the war, accompanying them on patrols, talking to local residents and growing close to the American troops with whom he served.
“Zia was there from the beginning with everything. He basically did everything with us. He was absolutely a dream come true,” Marine Corps Sgt. Andy Slivka told the Washington Examiner.
Slivka, who deployed twice to Afghanistan before leaving the Marines in 2014, has been working since 2013 to help Zia, his wife and three children come to the U.S. under a special immigrant visa program designed to protect those who risked their lives to work with Americans. But the convoluted visa-application process has been “hell,” he said.
Zia is not the only one. More than 11,000 Afghan translators were working through the application process as of Aug. 28, according to the State Department. More than 1,000 translators, with almost 3,000 family members, applied for visas to come to the U.S. in the third quarter of fiscal 2015 alone.
The fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act extended the program through the end of fiscal 2017 and added 3,000 visas, bringing the total number of visas the State Department can approve to 7,000. But that falls short of the substantially higher number who are in the application process, a number that only grows as people continue to apply, said Betsy Fisher, the deputy policy director for the International Refugee Assistance Project.
“It’s pretty clear 3,000 [additional] visas will be insufficient,” Fisher said. “So we will definitely be going back to ask for additional visas so we don’t have people approved but stuck because there are no visas.”
Champions of the program in Congress have committed to continue to fight for more visas in 2016.
“We’ve made real progress in increasing the number of visas available, but there’s much more work that needs to be done to ensure no one whose life is endangered is left behind. This effort is about fulfilling our promise to those brave civilians who have supported U.S. missions and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with our troops,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. “Next year, I’ll continue to rally bipartisan support for additional visas.”
The annual defense bill updated the law so Afghans who work for the American military until Dec. 31, 2016, will be eligible. Nearly 10,000 U.S. forces are expected to remain in Afghanistan for most of 2016.
The Obama administration acknowledges it needs more visas to accommodate the large number of applicants. In a statement on the House version of the fiscal 2015 defense policy bill, the administration wrote that it would have liked to see 5,000 more visas instead of 3,000 that made it into the final bill.
“The [visa] program enables Afghan nationals who have aided U.S. efforts through their work, and who have experienced or are experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a result, to apply for these visas,” the May statement said. “The administration strongly supports extension of this program and looks forward to working with Congress to enact the president’s proposal.”
Zia has received his initial approval that he is eligible for the program, having worked for at least one year with U.S. forces, but still has to go through what Slivka calls “the meat of the process,” including an interview at the embassy in Kabul. The increase in violence in Afghanistan in the past year as well as the resurgence of the Taliban has made Zia’s life in Afghanistan worse.
“His life is basically lived in fear the entire time,” Slivka said. “I couldn’t imagine having a family and having them be in danger all the time and knowing I was the one who put them in danger because of something I did. And my card to freedom was caught in a bunch of bureaucratic bull—-.”
