Afghan immigration to US

[Ernie]

Something I've noticed the last couple decades, and I assume this was happening before, is that all sorts of things are broken in Federal Government, but it is hard to get anybody to care about it. I assume many things could be expeditated with more staff and more funds.

For example, the US speeded up the processing of special immigrant visas for Afghans involved with the US over the time of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. 70,000 Afghans were airlifted from Kabul. One Afghan refugee friend here in State College says 70% of those people were not eligible for leaving Afghanistan. Many who were eligible never made it out. Of the 16 men on his team in Afghanistan, he is here in the US and another is in Europe. the other 14 have all been hunted down and killed by the Taliban. After the airlift, the US government resorted to its years' long process for eligible people and their immediate family members to emigrate to the US. This is just one of many concerns that US government officials care about, but can't pull the right strings to make anything happen.

What if a White House team would campaign on the basis of getting lots of things done in a reasonable length of time, and would use funding and personnel from NGO's to get things done. Could it work?

[Ken]

Something I've noticed the last couple decades, and I assume this was happening before, is that all sorts of things are broken in Federal Government, but it is hard to get anybody to care about it. I assume many things could be expeditated with more staff and more funds.

For example, the US speeded up the processing of special immigrant visas for Afghans involved with the US over the time of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. 70,000 Afghans were airlifted from Kabul. One Afghan refugee friend here in State College says 70% of those people were not eligible for leaving Afghanistan. Many who were eligible never made it out. Of the 16 men on his team in Afghanistan, he is here in the US and another is in Europe. the other 14 have all been hunted down and killed by the Taliban. After the airlift, the US government resorted to its years' long process for eligible people and their immediate family members to emigrate to the US. This is just one of many concerns that US government officials care about, but can't pull the right strings to make anything happen.

What if a White House team would campaign on the basis of getting lots of things done in a reasonable length of time, and would use funding and personnel from NGO's to get things done. Could it work?

Your specific example is almost certainly due to a variety of both foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstances.

Foreseeable circumstances: The US Department has nowhere near enough consular officers to process that many special immigrant visas with any sort of rigor. They were drawing down staff during both the Trump and Biden Administrations. And the State Department budget was constrained by the annual budgeting through continuing resolutions and government shutdowns and such. You can't just waive a magic wand and send 100 extra consular affairs officers to Kabul at the last minute. Such people don't exist. You have to have language experts who can go through Afghan documents and verify their validity, and interview people in the local language, for example. I don't think either the Trump or Biden Administrations made staffing up the Kabul embassy a priority.

Unforeseeable circumstances: The Afghan government collapsed far faster than anyone seems to have predicted, at least publicly. Maybe the CIA had secret information that it was going to collapse like it did. But there didn't seem to be any public information that predicted it. So whatever time frame they were operating under with an orderly withdrawal didn't happen.

Wars are unpredictable. Which is one reason (among many) for why they are a bad idea.

What is one thing that you think the government should do better? FEMA disaster relief? Airport air traffic control? IRA processing of tax returns?
Fire fighting in western forests? Etc. etc. When you come up with one then we can talk about what it would take to make that specific government function work better.

I don't know about NGOs specifically. But the Federal government has been downsizing staff and outsourcing to private contractors for decades now. Some of those private contractors are NGOs which do things like overseas development aid and disaster relief, others are for-profit businesses like Haliburton.

[Ernie]

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.
Either they didn't have the leadership to make staffing the Kabul embassy a priority, or else they did not have the funds. Some people would have paid more money to leave Afghanistan before it fell to the Taliban, but there was no one to pay. NGO's and businesses could do a lot of the leg work, for something like this, and then all the officials would need to do is review their work.

What is one thing that you think the government should do better?

I don't know about NGOs specifically. But the Federal government has been downsizing staff and outsourcing to private contractors for decades now. Some of those private contractors are NGOs which do things like overseas development aid and disaster relief, others are for-profit businesses like Haliburton.

One thing that comes to mind immediately is processing asylum requests immediately and more law enforcement at the border. I understand that congress has been in gridlock for decades and that is why no effective immigration reform is happening. Real, humane immigration reform isn't going to happen as long as both parties want to use it as a tool against the other party to stir up support at election time.

Congress isn't likely to raise funding for businesses to help with this.

But what if they would allow NGO's to help?

[JohnH]

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

[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.

[JohnH]

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...

[Ken]

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...

Well, the US should never have been involved in a land war and nation building project in Afghanistan in the first place. That much is true.

But does the US now have any obligation to those who are now in danger because they chose to work with the US in that failed nation building process in the first place? What do you think?

[Ernie]

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.

[Ernie]

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

That is a completely different question and you are welcome to start a thread about your topic.

Some of the 70,000 had connections to the Taliban or had the same ideology as the Taliban.

[Ernie]

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.