U.S. planning to evacuate thousands of interpreters from Afghanistan

Source: Politico | June 24, 2021 | Paul McLeary, Betsy Woodruff Swan and Nahal Toosi

Thousands are stuck in limbo and are under threat from the Taliban.

The White House and Pentagon intend to evacuate thousands of Afghan interpreters and their families to a third country as they await U.S. visa processing, two officials have confirmed.

The issue of Afghan interpreters and translators has become a major sticking point in the rush to move thousands of American troops and tons of equipment out of the country by September.

President Joe Biden has pledged to end America’s longest war by the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the move is already more than 50 percent complete, according to the Pentagon.

The thousands of interpreters who worked side by side with U.S. troops for two decades have remained in limbo, however, leading to scrambling in Washington to find a way to protect them from the Taliban and others once U.S. forces are gone.

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The plan is to use the Special Immigrant Visa category to process the interpreters once they’re moved to a third country, likely to happen in August.

Some of the interpreters have languished in government bureaucracy for years and are still waiting to receive their visas. The U.S. government has identified a group of these applicants already in the SIV pipeline for lift out of the country.

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