State Department runs out of visas for Afghan ‘terps
The Washington Post reports that the State Department is running out of visas for Afghan interpreters, you know, those folks who we owe because they forsake their homes and families to help us in the war against terror;
About 6,000 applicants are in the pipeline, including about 300 whose cases have reached the final stage of the process. Congress set a cap of 3,000 visas for 2014. The State Department expects to have issued that many visas within days, well ahead of the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
“We owe these people this opportunity to be out of harm’s way,” Heather A. Higginbottom, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, said in an interview. “This program and our commitment to them is incredibly important.”
The State Department’s current predicament is to a large degree one of its own making. The visa program was beset for years by interagency debates, security concerns and bureaucratic processing delays. In the fall of 2012, for instance, the State Department had granted just 32 visas among more than 5,700 applicants for the immigration pathway, which Congress established in 2009.
Yeah, but more than 50,000 illegals who are stacked up along our border aren’t all that worried, because they don’t have to wait for the broke-dick bureaucracy to give them the green light. Of course, we’re rushing for the exits in Afghanistan and leaving our allies to the designs of the Taliban this administration did their best to avoid killing.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry demanded a thorough review of the program last year and asked his staff to find ways to streamline it.
“Some deserving people were simply falling through the cracks,” Kerry wrote in an op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times last month in which he acknowledged the program’s shortcomings.
Well, then, the problem is fixed now. John Kerry has made noises about it. Problem solved. The Vietnamese scouts and interpreters we left behind ended up in reeducation camps if they weren’t murdered outright, but, John Kerry was too busy feathering his nest back then to notice. This time it can be laid at his stank-ass hippie feet.
Category: John Kerry, Terror War
The problem is the people in charge of the program have never risked anything, not even their “good standing”. They don’t know what it’s like to strap on their gear and go out each day not knowing if they’ll ever come back.
“…rushing for the exits in Afghanistan”
Substitute Vietnam 1975 for Afghanistan.
It’s deja vu all over again. – Yogi Berra
It almost seems as though this (lack of) administration wants to thoroughly piss off the people whom we may need as allies again some day. Or am I overreacting to this?
“Some deserving people were simply falling through the cracks.” What the hell does that mean, falling through the cracks? What cracks? Do the cracks have positions in the Dept of State? Do the cracks have titles and names? And how about we just pay Costa Rica or some other source of the current illegal immigrant stream to accept those who helped us and then put ’em in the pipeline for residence here? It is said–quite falsely–that the Central and South American illegals are refugees. Cute. When it comes to real political refugees–those who would be decapitated or shot for assisting us–well, they can just get in line at the embassy and hope they don’t fall though a crack.
I agree. What fucking cracks. Its like the same tired explanation they give that “the system is broken.” I just want to scream at them “you are the system you fucking tards.” I don’t want to read it, but I’d be shocked if Lurch was the one who actually wrote that op-ed. More hashtag/written hand wringing from a bunch of people that couldn’t get out of a wet paper bag with help.
” Do the cracks have positions in the Dept of State? Do the cracks have titles and names? ”
Yes.
Falling through the cracks = bureaucratic term for just outright trashing paperwork.
Quite simply, B.Hussein 0bama & Company don’t view these ‘Terps as future demorat voters, thus they don’t care how soon the taliban & company hack their heads off and murder their families.
…Somehow, I’m not confident that there will be any EO’s fixing this….
There’s a reason why the State Department was unable to do its job in Iraq, and was replaced by the US military (much against the advice of those who understand the role of the military, but with great success.)
The current Department of State is in deep need of a thorough house-cleaning, much like the VA.
“The current Department of State is in deep need of a thorough severe house-cleaning, much like the VA.” – There, fixed it for ya …
Alas, the Strike tags don’t work. “thorough” should have a line through it.
IMO, these people need to be forced to live the negative consequences of their actions or inactions.
How does an institution like State, that has paperwork in it’s DNA, run out of forms to process?
Strange how these mobs never run out of any thing when they are dealing with their pay rises or freebees. About time Pollies got of their fat wallets and started to see the word from the out side of their rosey castles with full scale defence that they never see or appresiate.
“Some deserving people were simply falling through the cracks,”
When it comes to the government, bureaucratic cracks are more like glacial crevasses where paperwork isn’t delayed it’s lost for all eternity.
This is a thoroughly embarrassing situation yet again in regards to how to treat people who help our nation. We are providing housing, meals and safety for illegal aliens whose mere presence in the nation is a crime, yet those who have offered their lives and freedom to help our troops rid their homeland of fundamentalist islamic terrorists receive nothing but delay and neglect.
Explain to me again why anyone should offer to help the United States on good faith alone? We as a nation have forgotten what it means to honor our commitments, to our troops, to our allies, to our loved ones. The ramifications of operating as a nation of liars and frauds will become ever more obvious as we struggle to find allies and citizens who will agree to serve the nation when they know the ungrateful nation will alter their benefits downward when they no longer need the veterans and decide they don’t want to pay the promised post service components of their contracts.
I’m in favor of exchanging State Department officials for Afghan ‘terps on a one-to-one, and permanent, basis. Starting at the top.
Now that’s a plan many Americans would be supporting.
I am terp and have done work with usa army for almost three years and now I want go to usa
I have worked with USA army for mor then three years and I want to get out of afghanistan because my life is in dangrous like every single terp