美国国家公共电台 NPR Trump Administration Has Drastically Dropped Visas For Afghan And Iraqi Interpreters（在线收听）

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are sounding the alarm about a broken promise - not to them but to thousands of translators and others from those countries who worked with American troops. They were told that in exchange for risking their lives and exposing their families to danger, they would get visas to come live in the U.S. NPR's Quil Lawrence reports.

QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Programs like the Special Immigrant Visa are really about the bond between American troops...

PETER FARLEY: I couldn't imagine in a million years that I would go over there and come back with one of my best friends being an Iraqi national.

LAWRENCE: ...And the Afghans or Iraqis who helped them survive.

KHALID AL BAIDHANI: I want him to get them a good communication between the U.S. military and Iraqi civilians over there.

LAWRENCE: That's Peter Farley, a former Army sergeant from Massachusetts, and Khalid Al Baidhani, who was an interpreter in Baghdad. Working with Americans made Baidhani a target for insurgent groups and not just in theory. In 2006, he was waiting for a ride home outside a U.S. base in Baghdad.

AL BAIDHANI: A car stop right away, you know, take out the pistol and start shooting me. Then I wasn't feel anything after that. I get shot.

LAWRENCE: Bullets hit Baidhani in the cheek and the arm. He came to in the back of a pickup truck headed to the hospital. Baidhani recovered and went back to work with U.S. troops. So did his uncle and his brother, who worked with former Sergeant Peter Farley.

FARLEY: This family has sacrificed more than most American families.

LAWRENCE: Farley lobbied the U.S. government to get both Khalid al Baidhani and his brother Wisam to the U.S. in 2011. It shouldn't have been hard since this special visa program was designed for people just like them - Iraqis who risked their lives to help the U.S. The program came too late for Khalid's uncle. Gunmen killed him in 2008 on his way home from an American base. But Baidhani's father and younger siblings also qualified for visas, says Farley.

FARLEY: And we worry about the safety of this family every day. It's hard to keep hope with the way that things have gone.

LAWRENCE: The way things have gone is the family is still in Baghdad. After years of waiting and red tape, Baidhani's father, stepmom and three younger siblings were granted U.S. visas in 2016. They sold their family home and all their other assets and packed their bags. The day before their flight, they got a call that the visas had been put on hold pending yet another security check.

MOHAMMAD: (Foreign language spoken).

LAWRENCE: That's Khalid's father, Mohammad.

MOHAMMAD: (Through interpreter) I was shocked that someone shoot me by a bullet. And I was collapsed after that.

LAWRENCE: He's now crowded into a rundown rented house with his oldest daughter and her husband...

MOHAMMAD: (Foreign language spoken).

LAWRENCE: ...Two bedrooms for the seven of them now trapped in a tough neighborhood in Baghdad. Peter Farley lobbied again and incredibly, he says, the security hold got reversed in 2017. But since then, the Trump administration appears to have put the brakes on visas for those who help the troops. In Iraq, there are more than 100,000 people stuck in the program's backlog. Last year, less than 200 were cleared.

ADAM BATES: This administration is hostile to refugees.

LAWRENCE: Adam Bates is with the International Refugee Assistance Project.

BATES: It would be impossible to say that these substantial drops are not part of some policy. These are people who put themselves at risk on behalf of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and are facing threats because of that service to the U.S.

LAWRENCE: The number of Afghans getting visas is also slowing, down about 60% since last year. A U.S. State Department official told NPR that it is working closely with U.S. government partners to accelerate the visa processing while maintaining national security as a highest priority. None of that makes sense to Baidhani and his family who are still under death threats and have no news about when they may travel. Khalid's younger brother Ahmed is now 23. He quit his job when he thought he was leaving in 2016 and hasn't had steady work since then.

AHMED: We give a lot of sacrifices. Actually, my brother shot twice, one in the head, one in the arm. I just want to ask why us security check after security check after security checks? I just want to ask them to see us as a family who actually want to serve the country there,

LAWRENCE: Peter Farley, like many other vets who promised their interpreters' safety in the U.S., he's angry.

FARLEY: If I was in their shoes and I learned about these stories where the U.S. wasn't offering protection to people that stepped up and fought alongside their soldiers, the U.S. did not offer protection to the families of those heroes that did the same, why would I ever sign up to do that for the United States?

LAWRENCE: That view is shared by more than 30 members of Congress from both parties, some of them veterans. They wrote to the Trump administration in March demanding to know why this law isn't being implemented. In April, the Department of Homeland Security responded that it expects the refugee process will speed up after adjusting to recent changes to enhance security.

Quil Lawrence, NPR News.