An article featuring IRAP appeared on the front page of today’s Washington Post, pushing the U.S. government to implement the visa program necessary to protect the Afghan interpreters who risked their lives working with the U.S. military in Iraq in Afghanistan.
IRAP has been working with numerous individual interpreters and U.S. military personnel to push these visas through. In addition, we have been working with legislators from both houses and both parties to attempt to solve the logjam at Embassy Kabul that has caused the stagnation in visa processing, right at a time when Afghan interpreters are most at risk: facing the U.S. withdrawal.
We were told this morning that in response to our efforts, State is already sending additional personnel to Embassy Kabul to process the backed up visa applications (out of 5,000 applicants they have issued fewer than 35 visas). We hope we can continue to move this issue along!