Refugee agencies unhappy with Afghan pull-out

Several faith-based agencies working with refugees are not happy with the way the Biden administration has chosen to leave Afghanistan.

Religion News Service (RNS) reports those groups include Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, World Relief, Church World Service, the Episcopal Church (which resettles refugees through Episcopal Migration Ministries) and HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society).


According to RNS, in June, those organizations urged President Biden to implement plans to evacuate Afghan translators, soldiers, cultural advisers, embassy clerks and others who have worked with American armed forces, media or nonprofits and allies and to authorize as many SIVs as necessary to make that possible.


President Biden told the nation this week that one reason for the turmoil was that “some of the Afghans did not want to leave early, still hopeful for their country. And part of it is because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence.” 

 

The President and CEO of LIRS called the claim that Afghans did not want to leave the country misleading at best. “We have been in touch with countless SIV recipients who have been desperate to leave Afghanistan for months and have not been able to due to insufficient financial resources and inadequate flight accessibility through international organizations,” she said.

 

The president of HIAS expressed similar frustration with Biden’s explanation, telling RNS, “The process looks like it was designed to keep people out of the United States, not rescue them,” he said.

 

He said he was “sickened” by the situation in Kabul and suggested there was plenty of blame to go around. “This should have been planned for 20 years ago,” he said. “It was three successive administrations — and then a fourth — that failed to put a plan in place to rescue people who are vulnerable because of their associations with allied forces. That to me is sickening and heartbreaking.”

#AfghanRefugees #HIAS 

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