Without an act of Congress giving them a way to apply for green cards, many are up against a one-year deadline to apply for asylum. For more than 36,000 evacuees, that is the only path available to them to try to make the U.S. their new permanent home.
One year ago, Masooma Said waded through chest-high water in a stream next to the Kabul airport to beg a soldier to save her, her mother and her sister.
Without an act of Congress giving them a way to apply for green cards, many, including Said and her family, are up against a one-year deadline to apply for asylum.For more than 36,000 evacuees, that is the only path currently available to them to try to make the United States their new permanent home because they don’t qualify for special visas given to Afghans who worked for the U.S. military. But most haven’t yet applied.
That difference hits her the hardest when Said gets behind the wheel of her old, gold Lexus. Driving herself — anywhere — is something she says she never would have been able to do in Afghanistan.Under the Taliban, women are not supposed to go out without a male relative accompanying them., who is still living in Kabul as a women’s rights activist despite the dangers, called the regression for women under the Taliban heartbreaking.
Her father had served in the Afghan military and was disabled, so Said said she went to work to support her family, taking a job with the U.N. focused on issues of food insecurity. She will have to prove that her family meets the definition of a refugee under U.S. law — that they are likely to be persecuted by the Afghan government or someone the government cannot or will not control because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group.For evacuated families who don’t have any English-speaking members, applying for asylum likely feels especially daunting if they haven’t found legal help or someone to translate their documents.
Peter Lucier, a Marine veteran who deployed to Afghanistan in 2011, was one of thousands of veterans and activists who volunteered with the so-called “Digital Dunkirk” network in August 2021. The collaboration worked to evacuate former allies from the country when Kabul fell to the Taliban ahead of the U.S.'s planned Aug. 31 departure.For the past year, he said, he has received a crash course in U.S. immigration law working to help recently arrived Afghans settle in St.
He was able to bring his five younger children, ages 12 to 21, along with his wife when they fled. His other three children — a son, 30, and two daughters, 27 and 25 — are all married and still in Afghanistan, living in hiding. He dreams of the girls becoming doctors or engineers. There are not many female doctors in Afghanistan, he said.Many evacuees have their hopes set on Congress passing the Afghan Adjustment Act.
Still, he’s confident there’s enough bipartisan support to get it to the president’s desk. The group has been active on Capitol Hill since the withdrawal, calling for more support for Afghans. Purdy, an Army National Guard veteran, was part of a legislative working group that helped craft the Afghan Adjustment Act. Veteran advocacy is going to be key in getting the bill signed into law, he said.
Still, that veteran support doesn’t always result in easy wins in Washington. The recent PACT Act, which extended Veterans Affairs health benefits to veterans injured by burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, failed to pass the Senate in July over Republican opposition. After an uproar from Democrats and veterans groups, the bill passed the Senate on Aug. 2, and Biden signed it into law eight days later.
“Our country has done this before,” Peters told the Union-Tribune, citing similar adjustment legislation passed after the Korean and Vietnam wars. “There’s nothing new about it.” Afghans make their way to the road leading to the military entrance of Kabul airport after the Taliban takeover in 2021.For many Afghans, getting a green card will only be a step along the years-long struggle to feel at home and fully resettled in the United States.
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