Day of Action for Afghan Humanitarian Parole

The WNY Peace Center is one of more than 200 organizations who have joined Project ANAR in a letter to the Biden administration and key Members of Congress, calling for the government to adjudicate applications favorably until it creates a special parole program for Afghans, and maintain pathways for safe passage.

We need your help pushing the government to act to meet the demands in this letter, by using this toolkit to make calls to your Members of Congress: Approve Afghan HP Toolkit http://ow.ly/Jx2n50HcyY5

“Afghans have filed more than 30,000 applications for Humanitarian Parole, in an attempt to access one of the only pathways available to them to seek refuge and family reunification in the U.S. The U.S. government has shifted resources and has more than 30 staff members focused solely on adjudicating Afghan Humanitarian Parole applications, but instead of using their wide discretion to grant parole to Afghans, they’re denying applications. This is unacceptable.

The U.S. owes a duty to Afghans, not just because they have suffered the consequences of decades of foreign intervention and occupation, but also because Afghans have utilized one of the only pathways available to them, and handed over millions of dollars to USCIS in the form of the $575 per person application fee. Until the U.S. creates a categorical pathway to meet the immense need in this emergent situation, Afghans will continue to file Humanitarian Parole applications, and it’s now on the government to act swiftly to grant parole and ensure safe passage for Afghans.

We’ve seen the government lay out a plan that unnecessarily and arbitrarily makes this process more difficult for Afghans, and in the last two weeks we’ve seen that result in what we’ve feared–parole denials. It doesn’t have to be this way — in fact USCIS’s own guidance allows them to grant parole for circumstances including generalized violence.”

Article 14: Right to Asylum

Article 14 of the UDHR grants the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution. This right, in addition to the right to leave one’s own country (Article 13), and the right to nationality (Article 15), can be traced directly to events of the Holocaust. Many countries whose drafters worked on the UDHR were acutely aware that they had turned away Jewish refugees, likely condemning them to death. In addition, many Jews, Roma and others hunted by the Nazis had been unable to leave Germany to save their lives.

Article 13: Freedom of Movement

Derived from Article 13 are the rights of internally displaced people, which are elaborated more fully in the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. They prohibit arbitrary displacement, and say that internally displaced people (IDPs) “have the right to move freely in and out of camps or other settlements,” a principle that was not respected, for example, in the closed IDP camps for Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.