A community of refugees from Afghanistan has gathered in front of america embassy in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, calling for their cases to be expedited after years of ready.
Now not lower than a dozen Afghans including every adults and teens gathered on Monday outdoors the embassy premises, asserting they’d utilized for the US Refugee Admissions Program in 2019, but had been yet to salvage any updates till two months ago, when they’d interviews with a US Citizenship and Immigration Products and services (USCIS) agent.
Since then, their await solutions has continued, they acknowledged.
“They acknowledged after one month they offer us the final consequence, after now they haven’t given the final consequence,” claimed one refugee, Ahmadullah, who like the others gathered requested to most realistic employ his first name for fear of retribution towards his family in Afghanistan.
“We must always not agree with any observe,” he told Al Jazeera. “Now we agree with nothing.”
Bahar, a spokesman for the community, told Al Jazeera by video chat from the teach “They manufacture us a hostage since 2019 … Now we’re sitting right here in this rain. We are able to no longer leave till we obtain this solution.”
These gathered acknowledged they’d labored in aid of either NATO forces or US and international firms and non-profits in Afghanistan, and in consequence, faced Taliban retribution if they returned to their dwelling country.
Bahar, a dilapidated IT supervisor on the Afghan central financial institution, told Al Jazeera that he had previously labored with the US Company for World Development (USAID) and his family had equipped land and aid to US-based mostly fully NGO Morning Huge name in their dwelling village of Jegdalek. He fled to Madagascar in 2018 after his mother was killed in a Taliban attack.
Any other girl who sat in front of the embassy, Bibi Maria, acknowledged she fled Afghanistan that very same year along with her four teens after the Taliban killed her husband, who she acknowledged was a dealer for US and NATO troops.
Some of those gathered carried indicators with Afghan flags that acknowledged “please merci [sic] on us” and “we need outcomes”.
With few alternate ideas for high-tail on hand, the fleeing Afghans acknowledged they’d chosen Madagascar on yarn of they may possibly possibly well also obtain a visa on arrival.
As of April, there had been 20 United Nations-registered Afghan refugees in the country, in step with the UN Excessive Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). While the refugees salvage some overall aid by technique of a native UNHCR-affiliated organisation, they are unable to work, and they yelp their teens are unable to whisk to university and that obtain entry to to healthcare remains severely miniature.
The UN has acknowledged that while Madagascar affords refugees and asylum seekers security from expulsion or forced return to their dwelling international locations, it has no law to invent them with social aid, work authorisation, or healthcare.
Meanwhile, the island nation’s economy has struggled amid the coronavirus pandemic. About 77 p.c of the inhabitants lives in poverty, which is compounded by usual natural failures.
“We don’t agree with anything else now,” Bibi Maria acknowledged by technique of a translator. “No money. My teens are in wretched health. The place end we stride?”
Relocation backlogs
The teach comes as the US has faced a tidal wave of Afghan refugees looking out for entry into the country on yarn of the Taliban took withhold watch over of Afghanistan in August 2021 amid the withdrawal of the US and other NATO forces stationed there.
But there are backlogs of applicants in programmes to relocate Afghan refugees to the US, partly attributable to the pandemic and likewise attributable to Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion of their country.
One programme affords special immigrant visas (SIVs) to Afghans who labored out of the blue for the US authorities or for firms that diminished in size with the US authorities, but is infamous for having a worthy bar of entry.
Quickly sooner than the descend of Afghanistan, the US Division of Yell also presented the Priority 2 (P-2) designation, an extension to the US Refugee Admissions Program. It affords priority to Afghans who end no longer meet the more stringent SIV criteria, but who labored in aid of US and NATO forces, for US media organisations or NGOs, or on US-funded initiatives.
Afghans living in a foreign country may possibly possibly well also also apply for humanitarian parole, which grants emergency obtain entry to to the US. That was what was granted to the 76,000 Afghan voters evacuated to the US amid the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
On the assorted hand, CBS News reported in June that over 90 p.c of completely adjudicated applications for that dwelling from Afghans outdoors of the US had been rejected since July 2021.
The US Embassy in Madagascar & Comoros didn’t straight away reply to a demand for comment from Al Jazeera concerning the refugees’ declare of affairs.
Bahar acknowledged the resolution to teach on Monday was spontaneous.
“We staunch decided, we can sit right here for days, we’re no longer going anyplace,” he acknowledged. “We don’t agree with money to pay for our hire. Many individuals must always not agree with any money for food, so where end we stride? Why end they no longer give us a consequence?”