George Packer reports on “Ali,” an agnostic Iraqi engineer who once worked for the US Army:
Ali tried to downplay threats. “I’m the guy who believes if you hear the mortars whistling they’re already past you,” he said last week. “I worry about the mortars you haven’t heard.” He remained proud of his job with the U.S. Army, and liked working as a human-rights researcher: “I was dreaming of a better Iraq.” Similarly, Karim held on through the worst years of the civil war: “I always said, ‘It’s my country, I am an engineer, I have a future here.’ ”
Two years ago, Ali finally stopped dreaming. In May, 2012, he applied for a Special Immigrant Visa to the U.S.—a category created by Congress, in 2008, for Iraqis and Afghans who worked for the American government and military during the wars. In November, 2012, Ali’s application fell into “Administrative Processing,” a bureaucratic black hole that offers no further explanation, and remained there. Earlier this year, Karim also applied. The process has been notoriously slow and opaque, with thousands of visa slots going unfilled while thousands of applicants languish, their money and their hope ebbing away as they wait to be told whether they have a future in America.
Ali and Karim were still waiting last month when militant fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham attacked Mosul and other Iraqi cities.
Read the whole thing.
Ali seems exactly like the kind of immigrant this nations needs. But while our southern border falls apart and the Administration asks for unnecessary billions to feed, shelter, and transport those migrants across the country, Ali remains trapped in a “bureaucratic black hole.”
Why do you think that might be?
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