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Trump’s Broken Promise: No One Left Behind
Unless one is directly involved in the Afghan and Iraq wars — on the battlefield — then you have little chance of hearing about the special immigrant visa (SIV). Please let me take a moment of your time to enlighten you to a shameful saga in the war that began under the heading of the Bush Administration’s “Operation Enduring Freedom.” The irony will not escape you.
According to The Atlantic’s Priscilla Alvarez in July of 2018, “The [SIV] visa program was established in 2009 specifically for Afghan citizens, along with their spouses and unmarried children under 21, who work for the U.S. government in Afghanistan, and many of whom later face reprisals, even death, for their allegiance to America. A similar program was set up for Iraqi citizens in 2008.” So what’s the problem? Why is it that so many interpreters who saved American soldiers’ lives are left behind? One word: Trump.
Since taking office, paranoid that immigrants from the Middle East could wreak terror on the Homeland, Trump’s administration has put a choke hold on SIV visas from the battle grounds of Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2017 alone, according to research by Alvarez and confirmed by politicians on both sides of the aisle, not to mention the State Department, “In the past year, there’s been a sudden drop in arrivals under the special-immigrant-visa program for Afghan and Iraqi…
