She said about 18,000 Afghans are still in the middle of the SIV process.
About 2,000 Afghans eligible for such visas and their families so far have been evacuated through the U.S. Operation Allies Rescue, Biden said Monday afternoon (Aug. 16).
In his address to the nation, the president said he was aware of concerns that the U.S. did not begin evacuating Afghan civilians sooner.
“Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave early, still hopeful for their country. And part of it is because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence,” he said.
In an email to RNS afterward, Vignarajah of LIRS called the claim that Afghans did not want to leave the country “misleading at best.”
“We have been in touch with countless SIV recipients who have been desperate to leave Afghanistan for months and have not been able to due to insufficient financial resources and inadequate flight accessibility through international organizations,” she said.
Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, expressed similar frustration with Biden’s explanation.
“He is blaming the victim,” Hetfield told RNS via text message on Monday. “Most SIVs couldn’t get through the 14 step, years-long bureaucratic obstacle course for SIVs. The process looks like it was designed to keep people out of the United States, not rescue them. And the (United States government) had lots of time to put systems in place to facilitate refugee resettlement without sparking an exodus. They didn’t make the effort and that is inexcusable.”
In a separate interview, Hetfield said he was “sickened” by the situation in Kabul and suggested there was plenty of blame to go around.
“This should have been planned for 20 years ago,” he said. “It was three successive administrations — and then a fourth — that failed to put a plan in place to rescue people who are vulnerable because of their associations with allied forces. That to me is sickening and heartbreaking.”
Even so, the HIAS president noted he does not think the Biden administration should have “rushed forward” with a troop withdrawal without first developing a robust refugee evacuation plan. In addition, he argued that even as the White House took actions to aid Afghan refugees in recent weeks, their efforts were plagued with obstacles.
