LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Today marks the three-year anniversary of Taliban fighters retaking Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. It also marks the beginning of the end of America's nearly two-decade-long military presence in the country. Over the next few weeks across NPR, we'll be hearing from different voices to mark this historic moment. This morning, we focus on the people still trying to get out. You may remember those harrowing and chaotic scenes three years ago of people clinging to U.S. military aircraft to try to leave the country as the Taliban took control. So what's the situation today? To discuss this, we're joined now by Shawn VanDiver. He's a military veteran and the founder and president of AfghanEvac, a nonprofit that helps people from Afghanistan resettle in America. Good morning, Shawn, and welcome to the program.
SHAWN VANDIVER: Good morning. Thank you so much, Leila.
FADEL: So it's been three years since the Taliban took control. Now the Taliban rules. The economy has basically collapsed. In this current environment, are a lot of people still trying to get out of Afghanistan?
VANDIVER: I mean, yeah. Everybody who served alongside of us, who stood up for the idea of America, who worked alongside us and thought that they had a pathway here, or they thought that they were investing in democracy - a lot of those folks are still trying to get here, and the good news is that they are getting here.
FADEL: Is that thousands of people? I mean, how many people are trying to leave?
VANDIVER: Sure, well, you know, there's probably - to date, about 160,000 Afghans have been welcomed into our neighborhoods through the partnership that AfghanEvac has with the United States Department of State. We have a couple hundred thousand - maybe 300,000 - left by our best estimate, but, you know, the reality is that the U.S. government didn't keep records on this. That's one of the bigger problems with the SIV program.
FADEL: And that's the Special Immigrant Visa that is given to people who worked with the U.S. military or U.S. companies on the ground there. What are the biggest challenges for getting people out, and what are their options for resettling here?
VANDIVER: Sure. There's a couple different pathways, right? There's the Special Immigrant Visa program that you just talked about, and I think sort of looking back to August of 2021 is important, right? At that point, the Biden administration had just taken over. The Trump administration and Stephen Miller had dismantled refugee and resettlement systems. President Biden had to rebuild and improve those programs, right? Our domestic infrastructure was gutted. Many resettlement agencies had to close their offices and their doors, so there was a real trickle coming out. The good news is, at AfghanEvac, we focus on reducing uncertainty, increasing throughput - so faster and more - and maintaining urgency, and we've had a good partner in the Biden administration for that.
And, look, the truth is we don't talk publicly about the ways this happens in Kabul or thereafter until we get here, to preserve the safety and the security of the program, but the SIV program has been rebuilt, and, like, in just this year alone, this fiscal year, the State Department has issued more SIV eligibility decisions than were issued in the entirety of the Trump administration. They've consolidated processing steps, which decreases the risk of fraud and increases the speed of processing. They're surging staff. And that's just the SIV program. The refugee program is the other pathway, and that's for folks who don't quite meet the requirement of having served alongside us for a year. The - Congress built the SIV program, and it's a very narrow program. So other folks can come here as refugees, and the administration has rebuilt that program, as well. Based on best practices learned processing our Afghan allies, the entire program has been rebuilt. We are very proud at AfghanEvac to say that we've helped redesign the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program process, taking it from years long to weeks long by condensing several steps.
FADEL: We're in an election year, of course, and the issue of immigration is actually very divisive. The former president, Donald Trump, is running on a platform of mass deportation and closing the border, attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, running for the Democrats, on her record. What would either candidate mean for people in Afghanistan - and these programs - who are still trying to get here into the United States, in the few seconds we have left?
VANDIVER: President Trump stopped the SIV program from running, so much so that they had to be sued by the International Refugee Assistance Project to get it started again, and Vice President Harris, just a couple weeks ago, committed to us that she would continue to expand relocation efforts. And I have firsthand knowledge that she's directly engaged foreign heads of state to help us expand our relocation infrastructure. The truth...
FADEL: We'll have to leave it there. Shawn VanDiver is the president and CEO of AfghanEvac. Thanks for your time. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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