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State to Save Millions Closing Visa Offices Across Africa
Marco Rubio’s State Department will slash the number of U.S. offices in Africa processing visas for foreigners seeking to come to the United States. The almost 50 U.S. embassies and consulates that are currently processing visa applications will be reduced to 20 to take advantage of economies of scale. This will save taxpayer dollars maintaining offices and staff that mostly just refuse visas anyway, as well as likely slow the number of Africans who secure visas only to overstay in America. Donald Trump haters will call this racism. Supporters will call it saving taxpayer money.
The United States currently issues and refuses both immigrant and nonimmigrant visas at some 50 posts across Africa (out of 54 countries there.) Immigrant visas (IVs), also known as green cards, represent a relatively small amount of the business. The way immigrant visas are typically refused in Africa (officially called 221g) multiple times before finally being issued, sometimes years after the process started (as if your “Incomplete” in sophomore English Composition was still hanging over you years after graduation), the refusal rates appear artificially high and make for bad statistical comparisons. Also, the Donald Trump administration in January 2026 already suspended all immigrant visa processing for 26 African countries anyway, so these visas really are not of much concern here with this new development.
The nonimmigrant visas (NIVs) in Africa, mostly tourist visas, are overwhelmingly refused. To avoid complaints, the State Department closely holds actual refusal numbers per post. However, State is required to release refusal statistics by nationality, and that tells the tale. Some of the highest rates in Africa are Liberians 78.2 percent, Somalis 77 percent, Burundis 65.5 percent, and Beninese 61.5 percent, and Chadians 58.6 percent. And those numbers are pre-Trump II. In comparison, the historical refusal rates for most European countries were so low (below three percent) that the U.S. used that in part to give up even requiring visas from them years ago.
It is hard to say what the point of maintaining a visa office in a far-flung part of Africa is just to say “no” over and over again. State’s standard reply has to do with maintaining good relations with the host country (questionable on the face when there are so many refusals and immigrant visa processing is shut down completely). This also hints at an answer to why the U.S. has so many embassies and consulates in countries that arguably have little to do. Much of this network was established during the Cold War, when Washington viewed newly independent African states as key battlegrounds in its global competition with the Soviet Union. As African countries gained independence, both the United States and the USSR sought political influence, military access, and votes in international organizations. Establishing embassies also allowed the Americans to monitor Soviet activities and USAID contractors of varying sobriety and propriety. Although the Cold War ended in 1991, the diplomatic infrastructure remained in place as State resisted moves toward regional “hub” embassies brought about by the “peace dividend.” State currently still seeks to justify the mass of embassies, claiming they are there to counter the usurious Chinese Belt and Road Initiative without really explaining how they do that. Movie nights?
No need to worry, however, about the small percentage of Africans who might have succeeded in obtaining nonimmigrant visas in their home countries. Some 20 U.S. visas posts will remain open, and the applicants can apply there. The “closed” visa posts will still assist American Citizens and process special national interest visa cases and diplomatic applications. As for the rest, few African capitals have direct flights to the U.S. mainland anyway, so many travelers can apply enroute. Applicants must travel internationally to reach the United States anyway, so requiring some of them to travel to regional visa hubs is not an unreasonable burden. It’s an old system anyway; during my time processing visas in London, the embassy reserved a number of appointments for Iranian citizens, who would fly in on a weekly Swiss Air flight, get their visa, and head off to New York even as the U.S. maintained no diplomatic relations with Tehran.
There are two main reasons to shut down these African visa posts. Refusal rates are high enough to question maintaining separate processing facilities in every country. Maintaining an American diplomat overseas to process visas is expensive. He needs government housing, an office, a local staff, administrative support, security escorts, transportation, language training, education allowances for children, hardship and danger pay, and more (some of which albeit are fixed costs even if personnel headcount decreases), plus the actual sunk costs of his salary, benefits, and pension. There is no single official figure because costs vary widely by country, rank, and family size.
However, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the State Department spent about $3.1 billion on pay, benefits, and allowances for roughly 9,000 U.S. direct-hire employees serving overseas in FY 2023. That works out to an average of about $344,000 per overseas employee per year. An earlier 2006 GAO study estimated the cost of placing a U.S. Foreign Service officer overseas at approximately $400,000 annually. None of this even tries to calculate the lost cost of having that expensively-trained diplomat spend his time saying no to visas in Monrovia when he could be working on much more critical issues in Beijing.
The other reason to shut down these visa issuing posts is because it will likely slow down the number of visas issued to African travelers and thus the number of visa overstays in the U.S. Because the U.S. does not comprehensively track overstays, there is no single, reliable headcount. However, the best source is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Entry/Exit Overstay Report, which calculates overstay rates by nationality for visitors admitted as business or tourist travelers. It shows overstays for Africans ranged from a high of 49 percent for Chadians, to five percent for Ghana. Keep in mind this rate is not the percentage of a country’s citizens living illegally in the United States (no one knows that number because the census cannot by law ask about citizenship status). It is the percentage of a specific year’s visitor admissions that DHS could not confirm departed on time. Considering over 20,000 tourist visas are issued per year most every year just for Ghanaians, even five percent overstay by them represents a large and ever-growing number of actual people.
So what do we call the shutdown of visa posts in Africa? A good start.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Five Questions Explain Why the H1-B Visa Needs Reformed
Five questions to explain why the H1-B visa needs to be reformed.
1) What is an H1-B visa?
Visas for foreigners to travel temporarily to the U.S. are designated by letters and numbers. B-1 is a business visa, B-2 is for tourists. H1-A allows foreign nurses to work in the U.S. while H1-B is for highly skilled workers — think AI scientists, programmers, and engineers — to work in the U.S. Unlike most nonimmigrant visas, H1-B is considered a visa with duel intent, meaning it is understood most holders will go on to apply for green cards, permanent residence in the U.S., and never return home to their foreign residence.
Created in 1990, the H-1B is an employer-sponsored visa that authorizes foreigners to work in the U.S. for up to six years. Tech companies and IT consultancies are the top recipients. Every year, a government lottery awards 65,000 slots to applicants with an undergraduate degree and another 20,000 to those with advanced degrees (universities and nonprofits are exempt from these caps.) The private-sector allocation is typically filled within days, hence a lottery to chose finalists for the visa. More on this in a moment.
2) Who are the H1-Bs in the U.S.?
The majority of H1-Bs work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, with computer-related occupations accounting for 65 percent. This was followed by about 10 percent distributed among architecture, engineering, and surveying. Amazon was the top employer of H-1Bs in 2024, hiring more than 13,000. Other top employers were Google (4th), Meta (6th), Microsoft (7th), Apple (8th), and IBM (10th.) Tesla ranked 22nd. The rest of the top employers are Indian staffing companies (see below.) All successful H1-Bs came through the lottery system.
3) Does the Lottery Assure the U.S. of Getting the Best and Brightest from Abroad?
Since 2004, the number of new H-1B visas issued has been capped at 85,000 per year, 20,000 of which are reserved for foreign students with master’s degrees or higher from American universities (the cap does not apply to universities, think tanks, and other non-profit groups, so more are issued.) These limited slots are chased by some 386,000 approved H-1B applications in fiscal year 2023, all thrown into that lottery.
So that winnows out the best candidates? Nope, sometimes just the opposite. Or maybe better to say any of the best and brightest are chosen by dumb luck and have just as much chance as the dull and dim. Because so many more people want an H1-B visa than there are visas available, a lottery is held. The lottery does not look at the quality or credentials of the applicant; he’s just thrown into the hopper to try his luck. All that is needed is the minimum qualification to enter, so many excellent candidates to fill jobs badly needed in the U.S. are never even considered.
Worse yet, the lottery is dominated by IT staffing firms which routinely flood it with entries, often for more visas than they need, crowding out companies that play by the rules and submit for specific, individual workers. Many of the world’s smartest engineers are shut out from the most lucrative, in-demand jobs, and shortages at the top end persist. It works like this: American Company A needs a programmer. Rather than try to recruit abroad and then navigate the cumbersome U.S. immigration system alone, they contract with an IT staffing firm, usually located in India (there are more than a million Indians in the U.S. on H-1 B visas, 72 percent of the whole; five of the top ten H1-B firms are Indian), for such a person, any person who fits the general bill. The IT staffing firm then recruits say 100 such programmers and dumps them all in the lottery hoping one will win. That’s your man!
The paperwork is sometimes tidied up to change the employer from the staffing firm to American Company A. In some cases even the lottery winner can be substituted for a preferred candidate. It makes it near-impossible for a specific individual to make it through the process. The lottery — by design — doesn’t reward top talent. It rewards luck and gaming the system. So it is not surprising 85 percent of H-1B petitions are awarded to employers paying well below the median wage, as determined by occupation and location. The floor for the H-1B visa salary is only $60,000, a number that has not be raised since, well, since when 60k was a decent salary in the IT industry. Even the the median compensation was only $118,000 fiscal year 2023.
4) Do H1-B Workers Compete with Americans for Jobs?
The law says H1-B workers are supposed to be paid the prevailing wage for their job, based on the Department of Labor statistics. In reality, the Economic Policy Institute found that 60 percent of H-1B positions were assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the occupation. A Government Accounting Office report found that between June 1, 2009, and July 30, 2010, 83 percent of H-1B jobs were certified at Level 1 (Entry-level.) This does not mean the workers themselves were entry-level, only that to save money some highly-skilled workers were down-labeled to make them cheaper to hire. Companies get low-cost employees, and the worker himself considers the eventual Green Card enough a part of his compensation that he tolerates the lower wage. The H1-B workers can’t complain too much; their visa is for a specific company and they are like indentured servants, unable to freely change jobs and thus made to take what they are given. Too bad about the displaced American workers priced out of the market.
5) What Can Be Done to Fix This?
Elon Musk and other tech barons argue the H-1B visa program is critical to ensuring American companies can find highly skilled labor that may not be easily available in the U.S. labor force. Trump himself has spoken highly of the program, ensuring its continued viability.
“Ultimately, if you’re going to have a skilled worker program for ‘skilled’ workers, you don’t award these visas via a lottery,” said Eric Ruark, the director of research at NumbersUSA, an organization that advocates for tighter immigration controls. “Obviously, that’s not how you find the best and the brightest.” To make the program better, dump the H1-B visa lottery in favor of a merit-based program for skilled workers that assigns points for various criteria, including education and work experience, similar to how Canada and other Western nations allocate their “Green Cards.” Another possible approach, considered during Trump 1.0, would be to prioritize allocation of visas by wages. One way or another replace luck with skill to the benefit of the United States.
It is also time to raise the salary floor for H1-B workers to make Americans more competitive for their jobs. The Department of Labor needs to update salary schedules more frequently, with an eye toward what real wages in the IT world are. And enforcement of H1-B regulations must eliminate more highly-skilled workers being used to fill entry-level jobs to get around wage caps. There should be no competition between American workers and H1-Bs.
Raise the overall number of H1-B visas available. Exempt “critical” industries such as defense oriented companies from the numerical cap. To get more of the world’s best, the U.S. needs to open more doors to them.
Continue to streamline the H1-B application process. The January 17 H-1B visa reforms are a good start but still not enough.
What should not be done is to eliminate the H1-B visa. The program as it stands today is necessary but not sufficient, and ripe for overhaul as part of the greater scrutiny Trump seeks to apply to all immigration to the United States.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
U.S. Blocks Former British Ambassador From Entering America to Honor CIA Whistleblower
The United States over the weekend denied travel to a former British ambassador, Craig Murray, who was also a British diplomat for some 30 years, and is the author of several books.Murray has stood twice for election to the House of Commons. He was “honored” by being thrown out of Uzbekistan by its repressive government after risking his life to expose appalling human rights abuses there. He is not a terrorist and is not a social media jihadi. He has no criminal record, no connection to drug smuggling, and does have a return ticket, a hotel reservation and ample funds to cover his expenses.
He is however seen as a threat to the United States.
Ambassador Murray was headed to the U.S. this week to be Master of Ceremonies at an award ceremony honoring John Kiriakou, the CIA torture whistleblower. Kiriakou was the only U.S. government official to go to jail in connection with the torture program, and all he did was help expose it to the media. The event is sponsored by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (of which I am a member.)
Murray has also spoken in support of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange. Hmm. Might have something to do with this visa problem.
No one has told Murray why he cannot travel to the U.S., though he has been here numerous times over the past 38 years. Murray learned of his travel bar when applying for the online clearance the U.S. requires of all “visa free” travelers. Murray was electronically informed to contact the State Department to see if he might qualify otherwise.
Ambassador Murray was stopped by what the State Department and Homeland Security calls “a hit.”
What happens is dozens of American intelligence agencies pour names into a vast database, which includes everyone from Osama bin Laden (his name has allegedly never been removed in some sort of reverse tribute) to the latest ISIS thug to all sorts of others who have little or no actual reason to be there, such as Murray.
The likely salient part of the database in Murray’s case is called CLASS, part of the Consular Consolidated Database. It is the largest known data warehouse in the world. As of December 2009, the last time information was available, it contained over 100 million cases and 75 million photographs, and has a current growth rate of approximately 35,000 records per day.
When one of those persons labeled a bad guy applies for entry or a visa to the U.S., the computer generates a hit. A hit is enough to deny anyone a visa-free trip to the U.S. with no further questions asked and no information given. Technically, the traveler never even officially knows he was “a hit.”
Bang, you’re dead.
If Murray chooses to follow the process through and formally applies for a visa to the United States, the State Department in London will only then examine the hit. In 99.9999 percent of the cases, all the State Department official will see in their computer is a code that says “Contact Washington,” officially a Security Advisory Opinion, or SAO.
The State person abroad will most often have no idea why they are refusing to issue a visa, just that they can’t. They sign their name to a blank check of a refusal. They make a potentially life-altering decision about someone with no idea what the evidence against them, if any, is. The traveler of course has no chance to rebut or clarify, because they too have no idea what is being held against them. There is no substantive appeal process and of course everything in the files is likely classified.
The “contact Washington” message triggers a namecheck process in DC that rumbles around the intelligence community looking for someone who knows why the U.S. government wants to keep Murray out of the United States next week. That process can take anywhere from weeks to forever, and taking forever is one strategy the U.S. uses when it just wants some troublesome person to go away. For politically motivated cases such as Murray’s, that is what is most likely to happen: not much. Murray may thus never learn why he cannot travel to the United States.
That is what free speech (and free speech covers not only what people say, but what people, Americans in this case, in America may choose to listen to) is about in 2016.
America is now afraid of people like Ambassador Craig Murray.
BONUS: Murray has only been denied travel to one other country, Uzbekistan. Such is the company America now keeps.
MORE BONUS: Those who think this is the first time the U.S. has used a visa denial to stop free speech, please see the case of scholar Tariq Ramadan, denied the opportunity to teach at Notre Dame. There have been many more such cases, albeit less mediagenic. This is policy now for America, not an exception.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
More Drowning on Hypocrisy
Holding one of her endless signature “Town Hall Meetings,” this time on the role of enhancing civil society, Secretary Clinton stated (apparently without irony as she is programmed to do):Each time a reporter is silenced or an activist is threatened it doesnt strengthen government, it weakens a nation… We have to continue making the case for respect, tolerance, openness, which are at the root of sustainable democracy.
As a sign of commitment to such openness, the State Department continues to censor Washington Post articles about my case from its internal press summary. While running other articles from the Post’s Federal page, State did not include yesterday’s or today’s story. Luckily, despite such pathetic efforts at message control, the Washington Post has a greater circulation than State’s own press summary.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s own State Department struck blows against respect, tolerance and openness, this time through the denial of visas to enter the United States for people whose words scare us.
That’s what the State Department has done ahead of the 30th Conference of the Latin American Studies Association, to be held this week in San Francisco. Of the 2000 or so conferees expected from Latin America, eleven Cubans have been singled out and denied visas to enter the United States. Of the eleven, many are well known and internationally respected academics with long-standing ties to top American scholars. One is a former ambassador to the European Union. Another once taught at Harvard. All eleven had previously traveled to the US. The State Department’s form letters to the rejected applicants said that their presence would be “detrimental” to American interests.
As if to make it abundantly clear that such actions are policy, not happenstance, the same week the Cuban scholars were deemed too dangerous to enter the US, the State Department also denied a visa to the US to Muhammad Danish Qasim, a Pakistani student and filmmaker. Qasim released a short film entitled The Other Side, that shows the social, psychological and economical effects of American drone attacks on the people in tribal areas of Pakistan.
Denying visas to people whose ideas scare America has a long history, and was a favorite tactic of the Bush administration. That it is in healthy use by the Obama administration is not a surprise, but do we have to listen to Clinton’s endless empty prattle about freedom alongside of it?
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
South Park: Iraq to Control Which Armed Mercs are Allowed In
Cartman: Those bastards! Those damn Iraqis are now trying to control which armed thugs the World’s Largest Embassy (c) and other foreigners are allowed to bring in to Iraq!Kyle: No way dude!
Cartman: Way. See, like any other sovereign nation, Iraq is gonna start demanding that dudes who want to come live, work and carry weapons to potentially shoot Iraqis down dead have permission to enter Iraq– that’s called a visa, dumbass.
Kyle:Your mother’s a dumbass Cartman.
Cartman: Perhaps, perhaps, but she’s doesn’t wipe Iraqi refugee ass like your Mom, Kyle.
Kyle: That’s her volunteer work, goddammit.
Kenny: Mmm, mmm.
Kyle: No Kenny, you can’t help her.
Cartman: Anyway, as I was saying, before this the US could bring any thug they wanted in to Iraq, like in the Dirty Dozen movie.
Kyle: That was awesome! Lee Marvin kicked Nazi ass dude!
Cartman: My friends at the State Department– I’m an important person there– just announced everyone now needs a visa to enter Iraq. No more free passes, even if you fly in on the State Department’s own private airplanes. They don’t roll commercial, you see. Like Snoop sez, it’s not a luxury when you really want it.
Kyle: No way, they have their own planes? Like helicopters and shit?
Cartman: Yes, Kyle, they do. They have armed helicopters. My Mom told me because the day it was announced inside State it appeared hours later in Al Kamen’s column in the Washington Post.
Stan: So wait a minute guys–
Cartman: Shut up Stan, I’m talking about super cool armed helicopters–
Stan: No Cartman, you ass, you wait. So if the Iraqis insist on visas, then… the Iraqis can control who enters their country. That means if they don’t want 5,500 armed mercs driving around Baghdad as “diplomats,” they can just say no? Like Japan, or Brazil or Kenya, or everywhere else on earth where the US doesn’t have its own private Embassy army operating outside of any law?
(A loud crash is heard, the boys are engulfed in flames)
Kyle: Oh no, a State Department airplane just crashed!
Cartman: You bastards! You killed Kenny!
Next: Beavis and Butthead visit Baghdad…
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Visas for our Iraqi Translators and ‘Terps
US Immigration law is denser and longer than the US federal tax code, and likely screws over more people. We’ll offer you today a short history of the programs to give visas to the Iraqis who worked with the US Government as translators and ‘terp (interpreters). The story is amusing, as changes to once-obscure visa laws mirror the situation on the ground in Iraq. For those in a hurry: most Iraqis who helped us are marked men and women at home, targeted as collaborators and the visa program isn’t going to help many of them.
Beginning
The images from the end of the Vietnam war are iconic: desperate Vietnamese, clambering to board the last helicopters off the roof of the Embassy, followed by thousands of boat people fleeing Vietnam. An enormous number of Vietnamese were resettled abroad, many to the US, many for their own safety after having been accused of being American collaborators.
This is not what the Iraqi visa program was supposed to be about.
During the first few years of the war, the official vision in Washington was that the war would transform Iraq into a happy land of prosperity and democracy. Iraqis hired by the US to translate for us were the lucky ones, nailing down a job that paid cash while getting their foot in the door for the new system. Since almost no Americans spoke any Arabic and thus could only conquer Iraq via mime, these early translators were very important to the effort.
Congress, imaging these early ‘terps as our own Gurkas, loyal brown people serving our fat white asses, wanted to thank those who provided such service. They created an early visa program modeled after the existing Special Immigrant Visa (SIV).
The SIV had been used by the State Department abroad for many years. Locally employed nationals, say a French accounting clerk working in Embassy Paris, who provided loyal, exceptional service to the US Government for more than 20 years could be rewarded with a Green Card, immigration to the US. The idea was that such a prize would encourage locals working with us to stay around for the full 20 year career. A perk.
Congress had the same plan for Iraq. The Iraq SIV would encourage long careers of good service. Section 1059 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, authorized the issuance of up to 50 Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) annually to Iraqi and Afghan translators and interpreters working for the US military. The cap was set at 50, because the visa was intended as a prize for the very best, and besides, the ‘terps would mostly want to live in their newly prosperous and democratized countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oops, what seemed like a good idea in the hazy early days of the wars turned out to not make any sense given events on the ground. Military leaders saw their Iraqi (and Afghani) helpers murdered in their homes, labeled traitors by the growing insurgency that they acknowledged, even as Washington pretended it did not exist. The limit of 50 a year was a joke as soldiers helped their ‘terps apply by the hundreds. An early decision was made in DC that the 50 visas meant 50 actual visas, not visas for 50 families. Thus, if Mohammed (not his real name) the ‘terp, his wife and their six kids were approved, the yearly quota dropped behind them to only 42.
Political winds in Washington went round and round over the issue. Changes were made that saw SIVs issued to a ‘terps’ spouse and children as not counting toward the 50 limit. An amendment to Section 1059 expanded the total number of visas to 500 per year for FY 2007 and FY 2008 only. Still, to help keep the pile of applications in some form of check, lower ranking soldiers could not supply the critical “Letter of Recommendation.” That still had to be signed by a General, Lieutenant General, Major General, Brigadier General in the Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps; Admiral, Rear Admiral in the Navy; or the Chief of Mission in Baghdad or Kabul.
Middle
As awareness that the wars of terror were nothing but a huge cluster fuck seeped into the heads of Washington lawmakers, something needed to change with the SIV program. Designed to reward 50 of the best ‘terps, the program quickly evolved into a pseudo-refugee route to save the lives of locals who helped us conquer Iraq and Afghanistan.
Therefore, largely through the efforts of Senator Edward Kennedy, Section 1244 of the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, authorized the issuance of up to 5000 Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) annually through fiscal year (FY) 2012 to Iraqi nationals who have worked for or on behalf of the US Government in Iraq (Afghanis got no such relief). The Act opened the SIV process to Iraqi employees and contractors who have been employed by or on behalf of the U.S. Government in Iraq on or after March 20, 2003, for a period of one year or more, and specifically added the dubious requirement “must have experienced or are experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a consequence of that employment.”
Importantly, the critical “Letter of Recommendation” no longer had to come from an inaccessible big shot per se. Officially the Letter still had to be signed by the Ambassador (Chief of Mission, COM) but in fact would be based on something written by a lower level supervisor. The recommending supervisor would normally be the US citizen who directly supervised the ‘terp, or even one who supervised the company that employed the ‘terp (most Iraqis worked for a middle man contractor, and not directly for the Army or the Embassy). Spouses and children were not counted against the 5000 yearly limit.
The Letter needed only to include a description of “faithful service” to the US Government, nothing more formal. Better yet, the standard of proof required to demonstrate the “ongoing serious threat” was only that the ‘terp write a brief statement describing the threat faced as a result of US Government employment in Iraq. Visas out of the 5000 not used in one year could be rolled over into the next year to increase the pool. Procedures allowed for documents to be submitted by email, ending the almost impossible task of accessing the fortress Embassy inside the moated Green Zone, a deal breaker for common Iraqis. The final, required, in-person interview could be done either in Baghdad or for those who lives were too much in danger to visit their own capital city, Amman or Cairo.
Though not a refugee program per se, Iraqi special immigrants are eligible for the same resettlement assistance, entitlement programs, and other benefits as refugees admitted under the US Refugee Admissions Program, for up to eight months after being admitted to the United States. SIV families could also participate in the Department of State’s Reception and Placement Program, which covered their first 90 days in the United States. The State Department would even loan them, interest free, the travel cost to the US.
As a special treat for the ‘terps whose lives were in danger, under some circumstances their spouses and kids could still get the visas even if the ‘terp was killed before the family completed processing.
The State Department has a helpful PDF summary of qualifications; be sure to scroll down to the end, where family ties are illustrated with stick figures with happy smile faces.
The SIVs for Iraqi ‘terps are wholly separate from other US programs, including US programs to admit Iraqis as old-fashioned refugees. As with the SIVs, however, US refugee policy mirrored US views of the war. In fiscal year 2006, just 202 refugees from Iraq were allowed to resettle in the United States. The US finally kicked the program into high gear under Congressional pressure, and admitted over 18,000 Iraqi refugees just this past year.
End
So it seems like everything was pretty sweet for those Iraqis who, despite their country now being a democracy and all that, were under death threats.
Except it didn’t work.
The New York Times reported that the program has proven to be a bureaucratic failure. Of the 15,000 slots available since 2008, the US government has only granted 2145 visas.
The Times reported that what should have been simple steps devolved into dead-ends. Minor issues — like whether the applicant provides two letters of recommendation or one letter that is co-signed, or whether the letter comes on the appropriate letterhead — have delayed applications for months. The regular delays in immigration processing were magnified given the communication difficulties with Iraq and the increasingly desperate situations of the applicants. A ‘terp being helped by his American supervisor to navigate the bureaucracy could suddenly find himself alone when the supervisor rotated back to the US and forgot all about the problems of Iraq.
The recent arrest of two Iraqis in Kentucky on terror charges have reportedly also caused delays, as gun-shy Embassy bureaucrats grow more reluctant to grant security clearances.
Things are no better, in fact they are much worse, in Afghanistan. The NY Times reports since the SIV program began in 2009, about 2,300 Afghans applied for visas, but the American Embassy in Kabul has finished reviewing only two cases. One was rejected. “The record is not great,” said David D. Pearce, deputy chief of mission at the embassy in what has to be something of a record for State Department understatement.
It can be expected as the US winds down the current chapter in Iraq, with the bulk of the Army leaving by the end of this year, that the bad guys will have more of a free pass on settling old scores and killing off ‘terps who worked with us. All-around bad guy Sadr has pledged to kill Iraqis who collaborated with the US, albeit via offering those who only played minor roles a pardon if they swear new allegiance to his cause. For the ‘terps left alive in Iraq, as their American supervisors pack up and go home to their wives Betty and Wilma, getting those all-important Letters of Recommendation will become more difficult.
We may yet end up concluding another war with people on the rooftop, scrambling for the last helicopter out of Dodge.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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