Confusion & delays experienced by aid workers at Fort Lee is emblematic of both the recent chaos prompted by the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the larger bureaucratic hurdles that have plagued the Special Immigrant Visa program for years.
Late last week, a request went out to U.S. refugee resettlement agencies asking to send staff to the Fort Lee Army base in Virginia. Pashto and Dari speakers were a high priority, but more important, volunteers needed to be willing and able to work 12-hour days, including weekends, for at least 10 days.U.S-affiliated Afghans and their family members
“Last week, it became clear that those efforts were needing to ramp up faster as the Taliban was sweeping through, taking over provincial capitals and other places,” said Mark Finney, executive director of World Relief Spokane, the Washington state office of the Christian nonprofit that provides resettlement services to refugees across the United States.
“I left my family on the other side of the country and canceled all my meetings this week because I wanted to help people, and I came expecting that we would be working 12 to 15 hours a day, trying to process thousands of people,” he said. “And those people are still stuck hiding in their apartments, in Kabul. That's really a tragedy.”
“We have not received word as to when the next flights will come in to Ft. Lee,” wrote Mark Priceman, the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ assistant communications director, in an email to Yahoo News Tuesday.
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