“This commitment has no expiration date — the commitment to resettle our Afghan allies,” the senior administration official told reporters. “Under Enduring Welcome, we will focus our resettlement efforts on three main categories of eligibility,” the official said, referring to family reunification for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents and those resettled within the past year applying for special immigrant visa. and the US refugee admissions program. It is part of an ongoing effort to provide relief to Afghans and streamline processing. Senior administration officials previously announced they were eliminating one of two forms for most new SIV applicants, a process change they said would “cut about a month off the adjudication time.” The removal of the form means that processing will be done by the State Department and no longer through United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. But it will still be a very rigorous process. As of July, there were more than 74,000 applicants in the SIV pipeline — more than 16,000 of whom had submitted all the documents required for Chief of Mission approval, according to a State Department spokesman. As the administration moves toward a long-term strategy, officials envision phasing out parole for Afghans on a large scale, as it did last year, and ending the use of a facility that served as a U.S. final stop for those resettling in the country. Earlier this year, the administration awarded a contract to the National Convention Center, located in a neighborhood in Loudoun County, Virginia, to be used as a temporary pit stop for displaced Afghans. The contract is valid until the end of the current financial year. “We are now able to assign people to their destination communities directly from abroad and so people can travel without a stopover,” said the senior administration official.
