Afghan immigration to US

[JohnH]

How do we know the people from Afghanistan trying to get into America... are not part of the Taliban itself... ???

That is why you need professional consular staff who know how to vet documents and stories and why people from NGOs aren't going to get the job done. Plus I've worked for NGOs before and it isn't like they don't already have their plates completely overloaded in times of war and crisis. They don't have extra staff either. They have their own jobs and priorities.

The skill sets are also completely different. Someone who works for an NGO like CAM might be really good at teaching small scale agriculture or distributing Bibles. But they are unlikely to know how to sniff out counterfeit documents or interrogate people and detect holes in their stories. Just like a consular officer who is expert in those things isn't necessarily going to know how to raise chickens or build latrines.

I'm thinking about forming NGO's with people who have the necessary skill sets.

To do what exactly?

[Ken]

How do we know the people from Afghanistan trying to get into America... are not part of the Taliban itself... ???

That is why you need professional consular staff who know how to vet documents and stories and why people from NGOs aren't going to get the job done. Plus I've worked for NGOs before and it isn't like they don't already have their plates completely overloaded in times of war and crisis. They don't have extra staff either. They have their own jobs and priorities.

The skill sets are also completely different. Someone who works for an NGO like CAM might be really good at teaching small scale agriculture or distributing Bibles. But they are unlikely to know how to sniff out counterfeit documents or interrogate people and detect holes in their stories. Just like a consular officer who is expert in those things isn't necessarily going to know how to raise chickens or build latrines.

I'm thinking about forming NGO's with people who have the necessary skill sets.

What you are really just talking about is subcontracting out essential government services. Which generally turns out to be more expensive and less efficient than just hiring people directly. And in the case of consular services would require changing a bunch of laws I suspect. And run into other obstacles such as getting security clearances for these NGO workers who are going to be privy to all kinds of government intelligence data and such to do their jobs.

[Ken]

I'm thinking about forming NGO's with people who have the necessary skill sets.

What you are really just talking about is subcontracting out essential government services. Which generally turns out to be more expensive and less efficient than just hiring people directly. And in the case of consular services would require changing a bunch of laws I suspect. And run into other obstacles such as getting security clearances for these NGO workers who are going to be privy to all kinds of government intelligence data and such to do their jobs.

I agree that certain things -this may be one of those things- we are all better served by having the government do its job instead of hiring it done.

But maybe if the NGO was a non-profit instead of for profit NGO, it would be cheaper. But even then, I think the trade off would be that in exchange for the money saved, the experience would be less efficient for the beneficiaries.

If we are still on the topic of foreign affairs and Afghanistan. Then I would suggest that the very LAST thing that most idealistic NGO types would ever want to do is become "lackeys" for the government. I spent a few years in that world. The (mostly) young people who work for international NGOs tend to be idealistic types who want to be out teaching agriculture, doing mission work, doing health care with the poor and needy, etc. They didn't sign up to work overseas as bureaucrats pushing paper in a government office in a capital city. And those who actually do want to do that sort of work are completely free to join the foreign service which is always recruiting. In fact, some do. In any event, the training, expertise, and security clearances necessary to do that sort of work are going to be a total barrier anyway.

None of this is about cost anyway. It is about priorities. And staffing up embassies in conflict zones to have huge numbers of consular officers to review asylum and refugee claims is simply not a priority of any administration.

When it comes to foreign affairs, I think NGOs are already doing the sorts of things they are good at. Which is stuff like distributing aid, proving medical care, teaching agriculture, etc. And of course, mission work.

[Ernie]

If we are still on the topic of foreign affairs and Afghanistan. Then I would suggest that the very LAST thing that most idealistic NGO types would ever want to do is become "lackeys" for the government. I spent a few years in that world. The (mostly) young people who work for international NGOs tend to be idealistic types who want to be out teaching agriculture, doing mission work, doing health care with the poor and needy, etc. They didn't sign up to work overseas as bureaucrats pushing paper in a government office in a capital city. And those who actually do want to do that sort of work are completely free to join the foreign service which is always recruiting. In fact, some do. In any event, the training, expertise, and security clearances necessary to do that sort of work are going to be a total barrier anyway.

None of this is about cost anyway. It is about priorities. And staffing up embassies in conflict zones to have huge numbers of consular officers to review asylum and refugee claims is simply not a priority of any administration.

When it comes to foreign affairs, I think NGOs are already doing the sorts of things they are good at. Which is stuff like distributing aid, proving medical care, teaching agriculture, etc. And of course, mission work.

There are all sorts of NGO's. Some do what you just described. Others specialize in various sorts of things. I see no reason why an NGO couldn't specialize in helping speed up the process of visa's.

And don't forget that I am saying NGO's and businesses. This could also be done by a business.

[Ken]

If we are still on the topic of foreign affairs and Afghanistan. Then I would suggest that the very LAST thing that most idealistic NGO types would ever want to do is become "lackeys" for the government. I spent a few years in that world. The (mostly) young people who work for international NGOs tend to be idealistic types who want to be out teaching agriculture, doing mission work, doing health care with the poor and needy, etc. They didn't sign up to work overseas as bureaucrats pushing paper in a government office in a capital city. And those who actually do want to do that sort of work are completely free to join the foreign service which is always recruiting. In fact, some do. In any event, the training, expertise, and security clearances necessary to do that sort of work are going to be a total barrier anyway.

None of this is about cost anyway. It is about priorities. And staffing up embassies in conflict zones to have huge numbers of consular officers to review asylum and refugee claims is simply not a priority of any administration.

When it comes to foreign affairs, I think NGOs are already doing the sorts of things they are good at. Which is stuff like distributing aid, proving medical care, teaching agriculture, etc. And of course, mission work.

There are all sorts of NGO's. Some do what you just described. Others specialize in various sorts of things. I see no reason why an NGO couldn't specialize in helping speed up the process of visa's.

And don't forget that I am saying NGO's and businesses. This could also be done by a business.

What you are really talking about is government contractors. Basically have some private agency bring in contract employees to process visas. They would need to have the appropriate training and security clearances. Which would most likely mean previous government employees or previously vetted contract workers since the process of getting a security clearance itself is lengthy and costly. And that is because someone doing Visa reviews would need to have access to all kinds of secure government databases to vet the stories and paperwork of a Visa applicant. For example, if a Visa applicant says they worked as a translator for marine combat brigade in 2010 in Kandahar Province the consular officer would need to access Pentagon databases to verify that story. They are also going to need to check names, IDs, fingerprints, etc. against all manner of police and terrorist watch lists, many of which are going to be secret. So this isn't the sort of job that some missionary or aid worker off the street is going to be allowed to do without extensive security clearance vetting and so forth.

Bottom line. There is zero chance that this would be cheaper than just hiring more State Department Consular Affairs officers in the first place. But that circles back to government budgets, hiring freezes, and so forth.

[Robert]

Is there some reason it is important to try to move 70000 people from Afghanistan to America?

Aren't there other bigger priorities??

How about the far more than 70000 babies killed each year... doesn't seem to be a priority for Republicans... Democrats... or NGOs...

Again, this is a different topic. Feel free to start a thread about this.

I am unclear what the topic actually is.

[ohio jones]

Is there some reason it is important to try to move 70000 people from Afghanistan to America?

Aren't there other bigger priorities??

How about the far more than 70000 babies killed each year... doesn't seem to be a priority for Republicans... Democrats... or NGOs...

Again, this is a different topic. Feel free to start a thread about this.

I am unclear what the topic actually is.

I don't think either the Trump or Biden Administrations made staffing up the Kabul embassy a priority.

I agree, and that is the point of this thread.

Actually, that was the point of the thread this was split from, so I'm not sure why the split was requested. But here we are.

[Ernie]

More posts got moved to this thread than what I intended.

In the original thread, I wanted to discuss the use of NGOs and businesses to do work that the government does not get done. I simply used the Afghan visa situation as an example.
That thread got derailed into a discussion about whether or not the US should be helping Afghans come to the US in the first place.

So feel free to copy or move any parts of this new thread back to the original thread, if it belongs there.

[Ken]

More got move to this thread than what I intended.

In the original thread, I wanted to discuss the use of NGOs and businesses to do work that the government does not get done. I simply used the Afghan visa situation as an example.
That thread got derailed into a discussion about whether or not the US should be helping Afghans come to the US in the first place.

So feel free to copy or move any parts of this new thread back to the original thread, if it belongs there.

I think this is actually happening today more than you realize. Privatization has been the biggest trend in the Federal government since at least the 1980s. That is why Federal employment has been flat since the 1950s despite the population doubling and the Federal government taking on vastly more roles today than in the past. The little spikes you see every decade in the graph below are due to the once a decade census which hires enormous numbers of temp workers.



In fact, relative to the size of the population, the federal workforce has shrank dramatically in the past 40-50 years, from 1.3% of the population to 0.9%. That is a 30% reduction in size. And not because the Federal government is smaller, but because increasingly jobs and duties are being outsourced to the private sector.