Biden’s Handlers Loosen Terrorism Designation To Allow Afghans ‘Forced’ To Aid Taliban To Get Asylum

How can Biden’s handlers establish, at this distance of time and space, whether or not these people were “forced”? They can’t. But really, what could possibly go wrong?

“Some Afghan refugees now have a chance to avoid terrorism designation that blocked their path to U.S.,” by Hamed Aleaziz, Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2022:

Doctors, teachers, engineers and other Afghans who were forced to associate with the Taliban will now have a chance at asylum or visas after the Biden administration loosened a terrorism-related designation on Tuesday, according to government officials and documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

The exemption will be applied on a case-by-case basis after security vetting and is expected to help Afghans who fled their country after U.S. troops withdrew and the Taliban took over last August, as well as some Afghans who entered the U.S. earlier, said officials from the Department of Homeland Security.

Some can be flagged with the terrorism designation for as little as paying their electricity bill to the Taliban, paying money to get through a Taliban checkpoint or obtaining a passport issued by the Taliban. Others can get the designation for having worked as civil servants under Taliban rule in the 1990s. Among them are Afghan citizens who assisted the U.S. government. They must otherwise be eligible for asylum, refugee or other immigration status.

As part of Operation Allies Welcome, the U.S. has allowed more than 79,000 Afghans to enter the country since last year’s Taliban takeover.

Afghans, “including those who bravely and loyally supported U.S. forces on the ground in Afghanistan at great risk to their safety, should not be denied humanitarian protection and other immigration benefits due to their inescapable proximity to war or their work as civil servants,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas in a statement.

In Los Angeles, a 49-year-old man who came to the U.S. decades ago was denied a green card last year because he had been forced as a college student in the late 1980s to help a group associated with the Afghan mujahedeen, according to his attorney, Stacy Tolchin.

He distributed fliers and fixed weapons, believing he would be harmed if he did not do so, Tolchin said.

Tolchin hopes her client can now get a green card, along with a chance to bring family members to the U.S.

“I’m going to cry,” she said. “This is morally and politically right.”

U.S. immigration law bars people who are members of a “terrorist organization” or engaged in “terrorism-related” activity from receiving refugee or asylum status….