Right-wingers Said To Be Playing 'Immigration Game' With Afghan Refugees
Potentially tens of thousands will need relocation to the United States
Even as the most recent group of Afghan refugees have reached the United States and started setting out for their new lives, many on the political right have begun playing what one TV commentator called the “immigration game” with further clusters of Afghan nationals in need of escape from their homeland.
Potentially tens of thousands of Afghan nationals are desperately waiting for relocation to the United States, as the grip of the hardline Taliban grows tighter across Afghanistan in the wake of the withdrawal of US forces from the country for the first time in nearly 20 years.
These anguished Afghan nationals are so frantic to escape because they are the ones who actively assisted the US troops over the years, by providing translation and other forms of help.
That assistance puts targets on the backs of those Afghan nationals now that the Taliban is resurgent.
Nearly 2,000 Afghan nationals recently passed through the Fort Lee military base in central Virginia, before moving on elsewhere for permanent lives across the United States.
“Many of these Afghan citizens — our allies — bravely risked their lives to provide invaluable support for many years to our efforts as interpreters and support staff, and we have a moral obligation to help them,” Maryland's Republican governor, Larry Hogan, said in a statement.
Maryland is set to take at least 180 Afghan refugees, and Hogan signalled a willingness for more.
“It is the least we can do,” he said.
Other Republicans are not being so accommodating.
Foremost among them is Stephen Miller, the former White House advisor to Donald Trump, who was a chief architect of Trump's hardline immigration policies.
Miller appeared on Fox News to complain that for “local communities [to] pick up the tab for the education” for the children of the refugees “is very costly.”
“But just to get to first principles here, the United States of America never ever made a promise written or unwritten to the people of Afghanistan that if after 20 years, they were unable to secure their own country that we would take them to ours. That is nonsense. That is never been the U.S. government policy,” Miller said.
That's not really true.
Afghan nationals who have been of assistance to American diplomats and troops in country have been coming to the United States under what's known as a “Special Immigrant Visa” status since during the administration of George W Bush.
It's also true that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was originally negotiated under the Trump administration.
CNN host Chris Cuomo publicly questioned whether those on the political right would stand by the commitments made to the Afghan people who abetted US troops.
“Are both sides of the aisle on board with keeping this country’s word to upwards of 60,000 folks and their families who literally risked their lives for America. This is not hyperbole, okay? When people work with the U.S. in that region against the Taliban or al Qaeda or ISIS, they are as good as dead if they’re not protected,” Cuomo said. “And that’s what they’re told: ‘We’ll protect you.’ So will Trumpers play the immigration game with these people?”
“Joe Biden has done something brave”
CNN host and journalist Fareed Zakaria specifically called out Miller for using the case of Afghan refugees to stoke xenophobia.
“Stephen Miller’s response to the collapse of Afghanistan, the fall of Kabul, the takeover of the Taliban was, ‘Look at Biden, he’s trying to get brown people to come into the country.’ It’s sickening and it’s pathetic,” Zakaria said. “Look, Joe Biden has done something brave. It has not gone well in terms of its tactical implementation. Here’s an opportunity to do something brave that is the right thing to do, that will go down well in history.
“When we took in the Vietnamese boat people, it was not popular. We took in 1 1/2 million boat people. They turned out to be some of the most amazingly productive immigrants in America,” Zakaria added. “Amazingly successful. It is one of the things that we can be proudest of in that whole sorry episode of Vietnam.”
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