Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan triggered a widescale evacuation a year ago, Atlanta took in over 1,500 fleeing Afghans, the most of any city on the Eastern Seaboard.
But whether those evacuees will be able to stay in their new Atlanta homes is not guaranteed, as they face the prospect of losing legal status and potentially returning to their ailing homeland – a situation refugee service providers describe as a crisis in the making, and a big source of anxiety in the Afghan community.
Uncertainty over Afghans’ future in the U.S. is tied to the hurried way they arrived in the country.
Although they are colloquially referred to as “refugees,” the Afghan newcomers weren’t resettled through the country’s formal refugee program, a years-long process. Given the sudden nature of the U.S.-backed government’s collapse in Afghanistan in August 2021, American authorities instead took in most of the evacuees via a faster mechanism dubbed “humanitarian parole,” which lets recipients live and work legally anywhere in the country.
But parole status is temporary, lasting one to two years. For most Afghan parolees, staying in the country past that time will hinge on their ability to successfully apply for asylum, an immigration protection with a path to citizenship for people who can show their lives would be in danger if they returned to their home countries.
There’s a time constraint: most asylum applications must be filed within one year of arriving to the U.S., a milestone that is coming up for many of the 80,000 Afghan evacuees who relocated to the country since 2021.
Failure to navigate the complexities of the U.S.’ immigration system would result in additional upheaval for an already vulnerable immigrant group.
“It’s a disaster, a looming disaster. It really is,” said Hogai Nassery, co-founder of the Afghan American Alliance of Georgia (AAAGA). “And it’s just so irresponsible for the U.S. to bring people here and then not find a way to help them get through this process.”
In Atlanta, the brunt of the work helping Afghans file for asylum has been taken on by a coalition of immigration lawyers from the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network (GAIN), a legal nonprofit, and the International Rescue Committee in Atlanta (IRC), a local refugee resettlement agency.
It’s a tall order, with thousands of lengthy asylum applications needing to be filed in a short time window. Given they were forced to leave many of their belongings behind, Afghans may also struggle compiling the documents and evidence needed to substantiate their claims for protection.
“This is something that none of us are really prepared for,” said Alpa Amin, GAIN’s executive director.
At the end of July, GAIN held its fifth asylum clinic, a monthly, free event where immigration experts help Afghan parolees prepare their applications for asylum.
“I don’t feel like there’s much awareness of the massive legal tsunami that’s coming our way with the Afghan humanitarian parolees,” said Kendra Jeffreys, executive director of Friends of Refugees, a Clarkston-based nonprofit that supports immigrant communities.
The stakes are high.
“Two or three years down the line, if we are not able to adjust these people’s status, we’re going to have a whole influx of people who are undocumented,” said Asiyah Sarwari, staff attorney at the IRC. “That does nobody any good.”
Feeling of limbo
Amin says the uncertainty surrounding Afghan evacuees’ future “is taking an incredible mental health toll.”
The stress, anguish and confusion described by refugee advocates are significant enough to disrupt newcomers’ acclimatization to their new surroundings.
“It’s almost like they’re being stunted in the integration process,” Sarwari said.
Justin Howell, the IRC in Atlanta’s executive director, agrees.
“We just know that so many people are in that limbo and just waiting to start their lives,” he said. “Many refugees and immigrant groups start their own businesses. How do you start a business if you don’t even know you’re going to be here in a year?
Credit: Miguel Martinez for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Miguel Martinez for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Evacuees want to access a more permanent immigration status than humanitarian parole for stability, but also to protect their families. Being granted asylum gives migrants the ability to one day petition the U.S. government for certain family members to join them in this country.
That means loved ones who weren’t able to evacuate Afghanistan when the Taliban took over could still come to safety in the U.S.
“There are children who couldn’t make it through that gauntlet of the airport” in Kabul, Sarwari said. “And so, they want to be reunited [with their parents] but they can’t.”
Last fall, Congress instructed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to expedite the agency’s review of Afghan evacuees’ asylum applications, and issue a final decision within a 150-day timeframe. By contrast, most of the hundreds of thousands of other asylum seekers in the U.S. have to wait years before their cases are considered. Immigration authorities have also decided to exempt Afghan parolees from the various fees migrants must normally pay when filing for various types of immigration benefits.
“These actions will help facilitate [Afghan nationals’] resettlement in the U.S.,” a USCIS spokesperson said via email.
Advocates would like to see Congress go further and pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would offer Afghans in the U.S. a fast-track to permanent residency and citizenship, echoing similar actions taken in the past to protect Vietnamese or Cuban exiles. But there’s scant hope the bill will pass.
“I am personally not optimistic that [the Afghan Adjustment Act] is going to succeed,” Amin said. “And I think that that is the sentiment that the Afghan community is now feeling, which is why we see such an intense push for submitting the asylum applications, because it does feel like the only option for many people.”
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