Now we can rest easy. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced that Afghan refugees who arrived in the U.S. before last week, specifically March 15, will now have Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the next 18 months. This means that they cannot be deported, and so no racist, redneck, xenophobic MAGA-hat-wearing yahoos will be able to do anything about Biden’s handlers’ marvelous multicultural initiative until at least 2024. As we must so often ask about Biden projects, once again, what could possibly go wrong?
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas explained that it was simply a matter of paying back these people who had done so much for us: “This TPS designation will help to protect Afghan nationals who have already been living in the United States from returning to unsafe conditions,” he said. “Under this designation, TPS will also provide additional protections and assurances to trusted partners and vulnerable Afghans who supported the U.S. military, diplomatic, and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan over the last 20 years.”
Now, wait a minute. Mayorkas stated in late September 2021 that 60,000 Afghans had been brought to the United States by that time, including nearly 8,000 who were American citizens or residents of the country, and 1,800 had Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) issued to them for aiding the U.S. military in Afghanistan. What about the rest? Mayorkas explained:
Of the over 60,000 individuals who have been brought into the United States [from Afghanistan]—and I will give you approximate figures and I will verify them, approximately 7 percent have been United States citizens. Approximately 6 percent have been lawful permanent residents. Approximately 3 percent have been individuals who are in receipt of the Special Immigrant Visas. The balance of that population are individuals whose applications have not yet been processed for approval who may qualify as SIVs and have not yet applied, who qualify or would qualify—I should say—as P-1 or P-2 refugees who have been employed by the United States government in Afghanistan and are otherwise vulnerable Afghan nationals, such as journalists, human rights advocates, et cetera.
The upshot of this is that over 80% of the Afghan evacuees were neither American citizens nor SIV holders. So who are they? No one knows. But the point is that they are not the people who “supported the U.S. military, diplomatic, and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan over the last 20 years.” If they had been, they would have had SIVs.
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Even worse, not only were most of the refugees not vetted at all, but in February it came to light that at least fifty Afghan refugees with “potentially significant security concerns” were admitted to the United States with no problem and are here now. There have already been arrests, although these have been of Afghans who apparently were unaware that the culture is different here from what prevails in Afghanistan, and some of the behaviors they took for granted as being accepted there can land them in considerable trouble here. In February, an Afghan refugee in Wausau, Wisc. who had received a considerable amount of loving media attention, Matiullah Matie, was arrested for sexual assault. Late in January, another Afghan refugee, Muhammad Tariq, was arrested at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia for the sexual assault of a three-year-old girl. The Associated Press reported that “according to court papers, Tariq tried to explain through interpreters that his conduct was acceptable in his culture.”
Tariq was correct. And now Alejandro Mayorkas and his colleagues have made it impossible for such people to be deported; we are stuck with them, and once again, the American people are going to suffer for a Biden policy, while those who formulated this policy are shielded from its consequences. Alejandro Mayorkas is not going to get near an Afghan refugee, and none are going to be settled in his neighborhood. Only people who are poorer and less well-connected than he is will pay the price for his utopianism, cultural myopia, and virtue-signaling.
The DHS news release announcing the TPS designation says: “Through Operation Allies Welcome, most Afghan nationals who arrived as part of the evacuation effort were paroled into the United States on a case-by-case basis, for humanitarian reasons, for a period of two years and received work authorization.” No vetting is mentioned, and even if there was vetting, it only involves checking for the refugee’s name on databases of criminals and terrorists. It doesn’t involve any cultural instruction; to warn Afghan refugees that some practices that are acceptable in Afghanistan are not acceptable in the U.S. would be “racist” or something. So once again, Americans will need to brace themselves for what these short-sighted policies will enable to happen.
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