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March 15, 2022

Dear John,

More than 70,000 of the nearly 76,000 Afghans airlifted out of Afghanistan and relocated to the United States have received an uncertain immigration status ("parole") that grants them rights of stay and work but provides no direct path to permanent residence or U.S. citizenship.

While the crisis conditions of the exodus made parole the quickest and most expedient way to get Afghans who had worked with the U.S. government and other allies out, it also leaves them in a limbo status that does not aid their deeper integration into the United States.

There is a solution, though, one rooted in historical precedent and U.S. national interests, as MPI's Julia Gelatt and Doris Meissner note in a new commentary. Congress could provide evacuated Afghans a straightforward path to permanent residence by passing an adjustment act for this population.

Lawmakers have many prior examples of placing parolees already in the United States on a direct path to a green card, doing so with Hungarians in the 1950s, Chinese and Cubans in the 1960s, Vietnamese in the 1970s, certain individuals from the former Soviet Union in 1990, Iraqis in 1999, and Southeast Asians in 2001.

"The United States has already determined that the Afghans it evacuated and paroled are vetted, deserving of protection, and should be allowed to build new lives here. While additional security vetting would be sensible, these Afghans should not be forced to individually re-establish their eligibility and the government should not be forced to readjudicate it," they write. "Congress should provide a streamlined pathway to an enduring legal footing for Afghans-sooner than later."

You can read the full commentary here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/afghan-adjustment-commentary.

Sincerely,

Michelle Mittelstadt
Director of Communications and Public Affairs,
Migration Policy Institute

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The Migration Policy Institute is an independent, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development, and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national, and international levels. For more on MPI, please visit www.migrationpolicy.org. 

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