They are the Afghan interpreters, and their actions have saved the lives of our men and women in uniform. Without our help, training the Afghan Security Forces to be self-sufficient would have been nearly impossible.
However, despite their service to our military, promises made by the U.S. State Department to these Afghan citizens to reward their service with visas to America are in limbo, according to a report by the Washington Post.
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.The State Department is largely to blame for this problem, the Post writes, as “interagency debates, security concerns, and bureaucratic processing delays” have held back the process.
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.
