Christian Refugee Advocates Criticize Biden’s Botched Evac…… | News & Reporting | Christianity Today

American personnel were evacuated from the US embassy in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, as Taliban insurgents broke through the city’s defensive line on August 15.As most Americans absorbed the shock of the Taliban’s full takeover of Afghanistan over the weekend, officials at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service followed the rapidly deteriorating situation with resignation, knowing it could have gone differently.

In May, leaders at LIRS, one of several faith-based agencies contracted with the US government to resettle refugees in the United States, sent a letter to the Biden administration requesting it remove Afghan civilians (and their families) who have worked with the US before its planned troop withdrawal.Anyone familiar with the “bureaucratic maze” that is the country’s Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process knew the State Department visa office wouldn’t be agile enough to respond to the urgent need for evacuations, said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of LIRS.“We’ve been screaming from the rooftops for months now that we need to get these allies to Guam or another US territory,” Vignarajah said.The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from RNS.The US began evacuating Afghans in the final stages of the SIV process about a month ago before canceling additional flights out of Kabul because of security concerns, according to Jenny Yang, senior vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, another one of the faith-based organizations that partners with the US government on refugee resettlement.

In June, most of those organizations—including LIRS, World Relief, Church World Service (CWS), the Episcopal Church (which resettles refugees through Episcopal Migration Ministries), and HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)—urged President Joe 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.But as the Taliban invaded the presidential palace in Kabul this weekend, two decades after it was ousted from the Afghan capital by the US military, many who remain in the country fear they will be targeted by the Taliban if it is discovered that they aided the US.It’s not only “devastating” to witness, Yang said, but also “disappointing to see how many people are left in a very vulnerable state because of the quick control of Afghanistan by the Taliban and the limited capacities we have as a government to be able to evacuate our allies.”She said about 18,000 Afghans are still in the middle of the SIV process.About 2,000 Afghans eligible for such visas and their families so far have been evacuated through the US Operation Allies Rescue, Biden said Monday afternoon (August 16).In his address to the nation, the president said he was aware of concerns that the US did not begin evacuating Afghan civilians sooner.“Part of the answer is 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,” he said.

In an email to RNS afterward, Vignarajah 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.Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, expressed similar frustration with Biden’s explanation.“He is blaming the victim,” Hetfield told RNS via text message on Monday. “Most SIVs couldn’t get through the 14-step, years-long bureaucratic obstacle course for SIVs. The process looks like it was designed to keep people

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