Afghans risk lives for U.S. visas

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO,Afghanistan | The children scattered across the rocky desert as they chased a partially deflated soccer ball.

“Madam, his name is Michael Jackson,” said Ahmed, the eldest in the group. He pointed to a little boy behind him who was pretending to moonwalk on the hardened soil beneath his tattered sandals.

“Madam, cookies,” said another boy, referring to the small bags of Famous Amos cookies that U.S. soldiers had thrown over a barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence.

Many of the children’s parents work at U.S. Forward Operating Base Salerno. It is the largest U.S. base in the Khost, an eastern province along the treacherous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and an area plagued by lack of food and a growing Taliban insurgency.

Despite the danger of cooperating with the U.S.-led coalition, hundreds of local villagers enter the base daily to work in light construction, ditch digging and cleaning. Those with higher education often are contracted by the U.S. military to work as translators.

Many of these Afghans are motivated not only by money, but by the hope of emigrating to the United States.

For most, however, these expectations are likely to be dashed, creating additional frustrations and disappointment within a population already wavering in its support for the Kabul government and vulnerable to the blandishments of the Taliban, assorted warlords and drug dealers.

In 2005, only 50 visas were issued to Iraqi and Afghan translators and interpreters combined, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that oversees the process.

The number increased to 500 visas per fiscal year for 2006 through 2008. Applicants had to work with the Defense Department or State Department to qualify.

However, after Oct. 1, those numbers will be drastically reduced for Afghans. Legislation will cap visas for translators at 50 annually.

Much more attention has been focused on the plight of Iraqis working for U.S. forces, and as a result, they have other avenues to come to the United States. The 2008 National Defense Authorization Act provides for 5,000 special immigrant Iraqi visas per fiscal year until 2012. Iraqis also will be able to apply under the program that provides 50 visas for translators, further reducing the available slots for Afghans.

So far this year, 468 Afghan translators have applied for visas and more applications are arriving, USCIS officials said.

In April, the State Department reported receiving “enough visa applications to meet the 500 cap,” USCIS spokeswoman Chris Rhatigan said. Unless Congress acts, she said, the number of Afghan interpreters entering the United States will dwindle.

Of more than 20 interpreters interviewed by The Washington Times recently in Afghanistan, most were unaware that only a small portion would have the opportunity to come to the United States.

“Everyone always says that we’re at the top of the list for a visa,” said one interpreter in Kabul, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. “Many of us do this because we want to be an American; we want to leave the war behind. We also need to feed our families.”

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