(Bloomberg) The Biden administration has asked refugee aid organizations to prepare to receive and resettle as many as 50,000 Afghans evacuated under a stopgap program as the U.S. accelerates flights out of Kabul ahead of an end-of-August deadline, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
The program, known as humanitarian parole, would target Afghans likely to be at risk under a Taliban-led government and who haven’t already requested, or wouldn’t qualify for, the Special Immigrant Visa program used to evacuate people who aided American military forces or diplomats. People who might qualify for humanitarian parole include women leaders, journalists and others from high-risk groups.
Humanitarian parole is a rarely used discretionary authority that gives people in urgent situations one year in the U.S. to complete their application for more formal programs like asylum, refugee and SIV status.
