The Biden administration is expanding the group of Afghans who could be granted refugee status to escape the growing threat of the Taliban across Afghanistan, the State Department announces.
Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
, the new policy will apply only to Afghans who have left the country and will take at least over a year for their cases to be processed, according to senior State Department officials -- even as the risk to these Afghans is urgent.
The administration has been under pressure, especially from Republican and Democrat lawmakers and U.S. veterans' groups, to do more to help Afghans who worked with or for the U.S. during two decades of war and development - and who therefore may be at greater risk of retaliatory attacks by the Taliban.
But the refugee resettlement process takes several months, if not years, including intensive security vetting, and the process will require Afghan applicants to leave the country, according to senior State Department officials - something that many cannot afford, cannot risk, or cannot manage. Some 750 and their dependents - 2,500 in total - who have been granted approval by the U.S. embassy in Kabul and cleared security vetting will be moved to Fort Lee, a U.S. Army base in central Virginia. The first of them arrived last Friday, with a second flight with several hundred more arriving early Monday, according to a U.S. official.
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