The New York Times ran this column on February 16 about the perils of Afghans due to failures in the SIV program.

What is a Special Immigrant Visa?

The “special immigrant” category was first instituted in 1965 as an amendment (and later amended) to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952, includes many classifications, including the following: An immigrant employed by the U.S. government overseas who “performed faithful service” for 15 years and those whose lives have been put in danger as a result of their employment with the U.S. government or its affiliates. Each need for an SIV involves a special act to approve more visas,

Here is a summary of the SIV programs specifically created for Iraqi and Afghan conflicts. Note that the size of these programs were initially set in the low 1,000s. By the end of 2019, some 18,000 visas were issued. An August 23, 2021 WSJ article includes an estimate that some 100,000 persons (including dependents) might be eligible. Last year, I showed here that past evacuations in similar circumstances indicated a 100,000 level effort.

Problems in the Iraq and Afghan SIV programs were well documented. Here is an Inspector General’s report dated June 2020.

This month (February 2022) Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee criticized the evacuation. Focusing on the SIV program the report said that the administration failed to correct well known problems in the SIV program including how employment was verified. The State Dept and Defense Dept did not have a proactive system for tracking employment.

There is no SIV program in place for Syrian and Kurdish helpers in the Syrian conflict.

From the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse ( TRAC ) at Syracuse University, which closely monitors immigration and border flows, immigration court activity, and other aspects of immigration. The following comes from a study of immigration courts along the Mexican border.

At the start of the Bush administration the backlog stood at just 149,338. The backlog had continued to grow under President Obama. And it only accelerated under President Trump. But in late 2021, the backlog about 1.6 million, having grown in every year.

In 2009, asylum cases took 15 months to be heard. Today, it takes 58 months,

Although the recent surge in the Immigration Court backlog is alarming, it is not as if Congress or the federal government has been in kept in the dark about this problem. Since at least 2008, TRAC has published regular reports and alerts about the growing backlog.

In May 2009 a TRAC study reported on how judges were poorly resourced (for instance, in clerks). Three presidential administrations has failed to correct the situation.

I posted on this problem in December.

Deployment of Texas state forces to the Mexican border has, even by public statements of the state, resulted in very little. “Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star to arrest Immigrants at the Texas border Is actually helping some asylum-seekers stay In the country” (here). With the estimated cost of personnel deployment at $2 billion, it is hard to see the merit in the arrest of only some 10,000 persons, virtually all for minor infractions of trespass, and the apparently referral of tens of thousands of persons to what may be ayslum applications.

In March, 2021 Texas governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, an initiative to deploy public safety personnel to the Mexican border

On June 1, 2021, Governor Abbott issued a disaster declaration along Texas’ southern border. “The Governor is authorizing the use of all necessary and available state and local resources to protect landowners in these counties from trespassers and the damage they cause to private property. ‘President Biden’s open-border policies have paved the way for dangerous gangs and cartels, human traffickers, and deadly drugs like fentanyl to pour into our communities,’ said Governor Abbott. Meanwhile, landowners along the border are seeing their property damaged and vandalized.”

Because states cannot enforce immigration laws, Texas authorities are left to arresting persons for innocently trespassing on private property and handing the vast majority of persons over to the Feds, leading to asylum applications.

In October 2021, one news media outlet reported 7,000 arrests, another 32,000 arrests. The grounds of arrests were usually trespassing on private property without intent or damage to the property – not serious criminal acts such as smuggling or trafficking.

“At the end of the day, my office is not enforcing immigration laws. They’re being charged with trespass,” the Val Verde County attorney said. “What I can tell you is this, as I’ve considered every aspect in those cases we have dismissed, I’m pretty confident those individuals didn’t break anybody’s fence, didn’t cause destruction, didn’t linger, didn’t harass anybody in their home. They’re simply crossing what to them looks like open rural land.” (from here.)

A February 2 article said that the Department of Public Safety said that it made 10,400 criminal arrests, including 2,572 arrests for criminal trespassing, and turned some 100,000 persons over to the CBP (Customs and Border Protection). I can’t find information as to how many so turned over applied for asylum, nor those convicted. (also here.)

The National Guard deployment is expected to cost $2 billion, with about 6,500 troops plus Dept of Public Safety personnel at the border.

Processing times for visas have generally increased. The increases began before the pandemic, for instance by 2019. Go here for the USCIS’s own website for estimating processing delays by type of visa and USCIS office. (Example, Green Card award (form 485) in Texas: 14 to 42 months.)

Trump threw sand into the visa processing machine. Here is an April 22, 2020 executive order suspending all visa awards.

April 12, 2021 CNN reports: in February 2017, just after Trump took office, there was a backlog of 2,312 family-preference visa applications, according to Rebecca Austin, assistant director of the National Visa Center at the State Department. Each of the next three years, that backlog more than doubled and doubled again, reaching 26,737 by Feb. 8, 2020. Then, due to the pandemic closures, by February 8 of this year, the backlog leaped to nearly 285,000, she said in a declaration to a federal court in California.

May 24, 2021 Boundless reports: In recent years, overall application processing times have surged by 25%, despite a roughly 10% decrease in overall filings received by USCIS. “This incredible increase in processing times is directly tied to several policies implemented in the past four years by the agency itself,” wrote Boundless. To tackle the backlog, Boundless recommends that USCIS overturn inefficient policies and procedures, such as eliminating unnecessary interviews and rescind harmful regulations that serve only to penalize U.S. employers, non-citizens, asylum applicants, and unaccompanied minors.

October 15, 2021. Cato reports: The State Department remains a major barrier to reopening the United States to legal travel and immigration. As of mid‐October, 60 percent of consulates remained fully or partially closed to anything other than emergency nonimmigrant visa appointments, and 40 percent are completely closed to non‐emergency nonimmigrant visa appointments, according to the State Department’s website. Nonimmigrant visas are used by temporary foreign workers, students, business travelers, tourists, and others.

Worse still, the State Department has essentially stopped making any progress toward fully reopening nonimmigrant (i.e. temporary) visa processing with only 2 percent of consulates entering fully open status since August, and no decrease at all in the share (40 percent) that are fully closed to nonemergency nonimmigrant appointments. The fully open consulates (40 percent) are reporting wait times of, in many cases, six months or longer for some nonimmigrant visas.

December, 2021 State Dept suspends interview requirements for some visas.

January 1, 2022 Boundless reports that the USCIS had a net backlog of 2.5 million visa cases at the end of FY2019. Fiscal and staffing problems, pandemic-related office closures, and an inability to receive or process most application types electronically resulted 6.1 million pending cases by end of FY 2020. The backlog at grew to more than 8 million pending cases at the end of FY2021.

Much of this time line comes from here.

2017: In El Paso, adults who crossed the border without permission – a misdemeanor for a first-time offender – are detained and criminally charged. No exceptions are made for parents arriving with young children. The children were taken from them, and parents were unable to track or reunite with their children because the government failed to create a system to facilitate reunification. By late 2017, the government was separating families along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, including families arriving through official ports of entry.

May 7, 2018: the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announces it had implemented a “zero tolerance” policy, dictating that all migrants who cross the border without permission, including those seeking asylum, be referred to the DOJ for prosecution. Undocumented asylum seekers were imprisoned, and any accompanying children under the age of 18 were handed over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which scattered them among 100 Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelters and other care arrangements across the country.

June 15, 2018: For the first time, DHS publicly acknowledges that it separated nearly 2,000 children from their parents or legal guardians between April 19 and May 31. The government’s protocol for reunifying families has yet to be made clear.

June 17, 2018: Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tweets, falsely: “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”

June 18 2018: Tweet by Stephen Miller: “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry.” 

June 20, 2018: Reacting to mounting public pressure, President Trump signs an executive order directing DHS to stop separating families except in cases where there is concern that the parent represents a risk to the child. Trump falsely blames Congress, the courts and previous administrations for his family separation policy.

June 26, 2018: U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw issues a preliminary injunction requiring U.S. immigration authorities to reunite most separated families within 30 days and to reunite children younger than 5 within two weeks.

Oct. 15, 2018: The government reports to a court that a total of 2,654 children have been separated from their parents, and of that number, 2,363 have been discharged from custody. 125 children made the decision to pursue asylum in the U.S. without their parent.

Jan. 17, 2019: The list of families to be reunified is “still being revised” nearly six months after reunification is ordered by a federal court,

April 6, 2019: The government says in court documents that it may take two years to identify potentially thousands of children who’ve been separated from their families at the southern border.

Aug. 21, 2019: DHS and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announce a new rule that would end the Flores settlement, a consent decree in place for more than two decades that limits the length of time migrant children can be detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to 20 days, requires the government to comply with certain standards of care, and states that children must be placed in the “least restrictive” setting appropriate for their age and needs. The Trump administration’s rule would allow it to indefinitely detain migrant families who crossed the border without authorization.

Sept. 27, 2019: U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California rejects the administration’s plan to end the Flores settlement.

October 3, 2019: The American Civil Liberties Union and partners file a federal lawsuit (A.I.I.L. v. Sessions) seeking damages on behalf of thousands of traumatized children and parents who were forcibly torn from each other under the Trump administration’s practice of separating families at the border.

February 2, 2021: President Biden signs executive order 14011 to establish the interagency task force on the reunification of families.

June 8, 2021: The task forces counts 3,913 children of having been separated. Of the 3,913 children, 1,786 have been reunified with a parent, mostly during Trump’s tenure, parents of another 1,965 have been contacted and the whereabouts of 391 have not been established. Many who have been contacted were released to other family members.

Sept 30, 2021: The task force issues an interim report: As of September 23, the task force has identified 3948 children who were separated from their parents by the department of Homeland Security at the United States Mexican border between July 1, 2017 and January 20, 2021. The task force is aware of 410 children who were returned to the home country, some with in some without their parents, and 1,707 parents who were returned to their home country, some with and some without their children. The task force confirm that 2171 children have been reunified with the parents in the United States; in addition, the task force has reunified 50 children. There are 1,727 children who have not been reunified to the task force’s knowledge and 50 children who are in the process of being unified by the task force.

December 16, 2021: The Biden administration abandons negotiations over compensation for plaintiffs in ACLU class action suit filed October 3, 2019.

Naturalizations of eligible persons rose upwards towards one million a year during the Trump administration, out of fear that he would block naturalization. The Pandemic drove the numbers down to under 700,000. (Go here and here).

Consistent with his anti-immigration policy, President Trump even made it more difficult for Green Card holders to become citizens, by doubling fees, eliminating most fee waivers for low-income applicants, and impose a more difficult and time-consuming civics test. The fee proposal was blocked by a U.S. district court judge, and the Biden administration reinstated the earlier civics test shortly after taking office in early 2021.

There were 23.2 million naturalized U.S. citizens in the United States in 2019, the most recent reporting available, making up 52 percent of the overall immigrant population, which stood at 44.9 million. 

Many immigrants who are here on permanent visas (green cards) don’t take out citizenship, but most do, and the rate has gone up. According to Pew Research, naturalization rates rose from 62% in 2005 to 67% in 2015. An estimated 9 million are eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship. The 11 million illegal immigrants are of course not eligible.

Eligible immigrants from Vietnam, 86%, and Iran, 85%, had the highest naturalization rates of any group in 2015. Above 80% rates are seen for India, South Korea and a few other countries. The rate among Chinese is 76%. Mexican immigrants have long had among the lowest U.S. naturalization rates (42%) of any origin group.

To be eligible for U.S. citizenship, immigrants must be age 18 or older, have resided in the U.S. for at least five years as lawful permanent residents (or three years for those married to a U.S. citizen), and be in good standing with the law, among other requirements. The multi-step process to obtain U.S. citizenship begins with submitting an application and paying a $725 fee.

The U.S. government denied naturalization applications from 2005 to 2015 to 11% of the 8.5 million applications filed during this time. The standards are here. Ability to speak English is one of them but there are exemptions.

The East Bay Jewish Family and Community Service organization is up in arms about the way that the administration is effectively abandoning many Afghans who deserve to get out of that country, It issued a press release on December 7, containing these excerpts:

This week, the U.S. government began denying humanitarian parole applications and dashing the hopes of thousands of Afghans awaiting rescue. After months of inaction on these urgent petitions, this week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began denying them and extinguishing any chance of rescue.

In just four months, JFCS East Bay has resettled almost 300 Afghan evacuees and anticipates welcoming many more. Our Immigration Legal Services team has assisted in the filing of nearly 100 humanitarian parole applications and covered thousands of dollars in USCIS filing fees since August.

The wave of denial letters received by immigration advocates across the U.S. this week articulate—for the first time—a set of stringent new criteria that will exclude the vast majority of Afghan humanitarian parole applicants from eligibility. (For definition of “parole,” go here.)

Among other things, USCIS rejection letters are asking applicants to provide “documentation from a credible third-party source specifically naming the beneficiary and outlining the serious harm they face and the imminence of the harm in the location where the beneficiary is located.”

USCIS reports that it has received more than 30,000 such applications. At $575 per person, USCIS has likely taken in about $17,250,000 in application fees from these filings, making this process look like a classic “bait and switch” scam.

“Not only has USCIS created a very high evidentiary standard, it’s announcing these new stringent criteria after the fact, and applying them retroactively to pending applications,” says JFCS East Bay Director of Immigration Legal Services, Kyra S. Lilien. “We have clients who have been waiting for an answer for months. While they wait, their family members have been kidnapped by the Taliban. Afghans are in hiding, freezing, without enough food, while being hunted by the Taliban. Turning the tables on them now is fundamentally unfair.”

Yahoo estimates the current volumes of cases. The problem above deals with Afghans still in Afghanistan: Those already been from Afghanistan and brought to the U.S.: nearly 5,000  American citizens. More than 3,000 are green card holders. 75,000 Afghans of which more than 2-in-5 are eligible for SIVs due to their or their family member’s aid to the U.S. government in Afghanistan. Others are family members of U.S. citizens and green card holders, journalists, human rights activists or other at-risk humanitarian workers. Roughly 35,000 evacuees are waiting at military bases in the U.S., while another 36,000 are home in the states or resettling into new U.S. communities.