Slow Joe, determined? Yeah, right.
There's a gaping hole in the endless argument over immigration — and it drives me up the wall. It involves a crisis that should have united both immigration hawks and doves in an effort to resolve it, yet you rarely hear it mentioned.
Indeed, few Americans are aware that as many as 100,000 Iraqis have yet to receive the visas to which they were legally entitled by an act of Congress — under the so-called P-2 Direct Access Program — because their family members worked for the U.S. military or civilian officials in wartime. This has put their lives at risk up until the present day, from Iraqi Sunni and Shiite Islamists.
Former President Donald Trump shut these families out entirely with his travel ban on Muslims. President Joe Biden has barely done better. And while there is lingering sympathy for Afghan military translators left behind by the chaotic U.S. withdrawal, you rarely hear these days about our betrayals of Iraqis.
One endangered Iraqi family, whose struggles I have been reporting on since 2016, is caught in this shameful mishandling of visas.
Khalid and Wisam Al-Baidhani, both former U.S. military translators from 2006-2010 and now American citizens — have been trying to rescue their parents and siblings since 2011.
Their latest, jolting disappointment occurred late last month.
As a result of his service, Khalid was shot in the face by Shiite militiamen while leaving a U.S. base in Baghdad (he returned to work after he recovered). Three years later, Wisam was sent a single bullet wrapped in a note: "This is for your heart if you do not stop working for them." Khalid's uncle, also a translator, was murdered and his body left in a dumpster.
In 2011, the officers for whom the brothers worked helped them get special immigrant visas for translators for the U.S. military, a program that no longer exists.
Given the risk to their family, the two brothers applied immediately to the P-2 program to get them to America. After five years of security checks and interviews, the family was informed by the U.S. Embassy in 2016 that they were cleared for visas.
But the night before departure, the family received a call from the embassy informing them that their travel clearance was revoked, and shortly afterward, their visas were denied.
The family had already sold their home and all their possessions and had to move in with a daughter. Khalid told me the reversal shattered his father's health.
Amazingly, the refusal was reversed on appeal — a rare occurrence, spurred by a campaign by Peter Farley, the former U.S. Army sergeant with whom Wisam went out on daily patrols. Farley gathered nearly 150,000 signatures on an online petition, and the family was conditionally approved again in 2017.
But then nothing.
Wisam told me in May 2018, "Now my family is living in limbo. I feel like this is not the place [country] we were dreaming about. At least the government should allow the families of people who helped U.S. soldiers to come here. All I ask is to be fair."
Farley, Wisam's U.S. military buddy, added: "These are the people we rely on in our war efforts. What message are we sending?"
Under Trump, that message was clear: betrayal. The P-2 program was virtually shut down during his four years in office. Only 158 Iraqis were admitted to the U.S. in fiscal year 2018.
With the election of Biden, the Al-Baidhanis hoped their chances would improve. Yet the Biden administration suspended the P-2 program for Iraqis in early 2021 because of some suspected misuse, and only restarted it in March 2022. The numbers are creeping up to around 100 admissions a month, which barely touches the backlog.
One apparent reason is the huge lack of sufficient personnel to interview and adjudicate visa applications. But such problems are fixable, as the International Refugee Assistance Project has laid out in an excellent 2022 report.
Nor has the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services made its impenetrable procedures any clearer. The Al-Baidhanis' family was finally reinterviewed in Baghdad on Aug. 23 for a total of nine hours about every mundane detail of their lives, friends, work, travel, and associations.
But instead of finally getting visa approval, they received a printout stating that further "review of your eligibility" was required, and "we are unable to estimate how long it will take to make a final decision." This, after 12 years in process.
"We served in the army, we proved our loyalty. This is so frustrating," Khalid told me by phone this week. "There is no way to find out how long it will take. And during the interview, they never mentioned us brothers, or my uncle, or the sacrifice we made."
Equally upset was Wisam's congressman, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who has cowritten a letter about the case to Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "This is not only frustrating, it is outrageous," McGovern told me. "This family is put on an endless merry-go-round, given that the two brothers served and got threats, and were shot."
"We have a special obligation to those who helped us, and this family should be reunited," McGovern said. "Yet we have been given no reason why it hasn't happened. There clearly is no sense of urgency."
That's absolutely unacceptable. The White House could make this program a bipartisan success story that would offset America's growing reputation as a country that betrays its allies. That would also require visa action on left-behind Afghans who helped Americans.
But in the meantime, the immigration service should let the Al-Baidhanis' family in immediately. There is no conceivable excuse for holding them in limbo for a moment more.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Trudy Rubin
Philadelphia Inquirer
(TNS)
Previously:
• 9/11/23: Even on vacation, there's no escaping Putin's murderous intentions
• 08/18/23: With new weapons slow to arrive from NATO allies, Ukraine surprises Putin with sea drones
• 08/09/23: Lessons from a military funeral in Ukraine
• 07/28/23: As Russian missiles again rain down on Odesa, Putin sneers at the UN and NATO allies
• 07/24/23: Putin is playing a game of food blackmail. The West can't let him win
• 07/19/23: Can Ukraine win the war against Russia? I'm traveling there to find out
• 07/17/23: From hell to Harvard: One Ukrainian's escape and how you can help fulfill her dreams
• 07/11/23: At the NATO summit in Vilnius: Will Biden seize or squander the chance to end Putin's war on Ukraine?
• 04/21/23: The Pentagon documents leak will embolden Putin as he tries to outlast Ukraine
• 03/22/23: The Russian attack on a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone underlines why we must help Ukraine win
• 03/15/23: Will the White House have the courage to propel a Ukrainian victory this year?
• 02/21/23: On the first anniversary of Putin's invasion, Ukraine fights on for its independence and for the security of the West
• 02/17/23: A former Pakistani leader's death, and his wise peace plan that failed
• 02/09/23: Earthquakes killed nearly 12,000 people this week. Three men are partly to blame
• 01/24/23: As Russia murders civilians in Dnipro, why won't NATO send weapons that could end the war?
• 12/28/22: What Zelensky worried about when he addressed a cheering Congress
• 12/13/22: The US-China conflict to watch is the Chip War --- which centers on Taiwan
• 09/14/22: Ukraine scores sudden breakthrough that should energize Western support
• 09/09/22: Queen Elizabeth's death deprives Britain and the world of a rock of stability
• 09/08/22: After Gorbachev's death, Putin wants the world to know he is the 'anti-Gorbi'
• 08/26/22: 6 months after Russia's war vs. Ukraine began, the West still won't give Kiev the weapons to win
• 08/15/22: Ukraine's civilian volunteers work to give aid and rebuild, even as Russia continues to bomb them
• 08/08/22: A trip near the front lines finds Ukrainian troops ready for a battle that could decide the war
• 06/13/22: The critical battles for Ukraine and for America are being fought right here, right now
• 05/02/22: Save Odesa to save the world from hunger and high food prices
• 05/02/22: Bloodless Ukrainian War, not utopian fantasy says one-time largest foreign investor in Russia
• 04/11/22: The only way to end Putin's war crimes
• 03/28/22: Don't let Putin's nuclear and chemical threats stop us from giving Ukraine what it needs
• 03/24/22: An elegy for Mariupol, where I walked six weeks ago. Now razed by Russian bombs
• 03/18/22: Zelensky's brilliant speech should impel Biden and Congress to protect Ukrainian skies
• 03/11/22: Mariupol's bombed maternity hospital exemplifies why NATO should protect Ukraine's skies
• 03/10/22: No 'no-fly zone'? Then NATO must find another way to protect Ukraine's skies
• 03/07/22: The third World War has already started in Ukraine. Europe and the US should wake up
• 03/04/22:Putin must be stopped from turning Kiev into Aleppo
• 03/02/22:Why is Belarus helping Russia invade Ukraine? An explainer on the latest in the conflict
• 02/25/22: What the UN should finally do about Russia
• 02/24/22: Why Putin's Ukraine aggression will change the world --- an explainer on how we got here
• 02/10/22: Ukrainian civilians train for war with cardboard guns: 'We are scared but we are ready
• 01/13/22:Putin wants to reestablish the Russian empire. Can NATO stop him without war?
• 12/10/21: Can Biden and NATO prevent Putin from invading Ukraine? Summit puts it to the test
• 12/02/21: Boris Johnson stirs up new Irish Troubles for his own personal political gains
• 11/22/21: Xi Jinping thinks America is on the rocks. Is he correct?
• 08/18/21: President Biden, get our Afghan allies on evacuation planes
• 08/18/21:The horror of Afghan women abandoned by Biden's troop pullout
• 08/09/21:China is pushing a big COVID-19 lie that makes a new pandemic harder to prevent
• 05/27/21: Punish Belarus leader for Ryanair hijacking before air piracy becomes dictators' new tool
• 04/14/21: Can Beethoven temper the political tensions between US and China?
• 06/01/20: US must stand with Hong Kong against Beijing's efforts to crush its freedoms
• 05/20/20: COVID-19 offers a chance to halt Iran's hostage diplomacy
• 05/21/14: Newscycle spurs visit to country my family fled
• 04/21/14: Blind to Putin's strategy?
• 12/24/13: Obama's Syrian indifference has led to more death and destruction. Meet some real heroes
• 12/13/13: Where liberals have come to love the military
• 12/09/13: The China strategy
• 11/05/13: Return to Iraq is worth a close look
• 10/01/13: Obama's call to Iran: Who was really on the line?
• 09/11/13: How Obama got Syria so wrong
• 07/24/13: It's time for Obama to tell Putin 'nyet'
• 05/15/13: What Russia gave Kerry on Syria --- very little
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.