Few Republicans have publicly backed this measure, and now it could get tied up in the hostile political fights over immigration.
But the answer was no: Congress failed to include the measure, called the Afghan Adjustment Act, in the big spending package that President Biden signed last week. It was reportedly blocked by one man, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. So, even the Afghans who made it here now fear the possibility of deportation and joblessness.
To be clear: This isn’t just an immigration bill. It’s a veterans’ bill, and a national security bill – and the fulfillment of a promise that was made to our own soldiers, too. “They’ve been in tears, talking about the people that have helped them. This is something that’s very personal to a lot of us,” Rep. Andy Kim, who advised military commanders in Afghanistan, told us after the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021.
But Grassley argued for months that it goes too far by including evacuees beyond those “who were our partners over the last 20 years,” and that the vetting is insufficient. Other Republicans pointed to a September report from Homeland Security’s inspector general that said, of the tens of thousands of Afghans we admitted under humanitarian parole, two people “posed a risk to national security and the safety of local communities.
And think of it this way: Tens of thousands of Afghans are already living in our country, including hundreds resettled in New Jersey. Now they won’t get the additional vetting this bill would have required. What sense does that make?
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