In the wake of our abrupt capitulation in Afghanistan, an uncertain – but substantial – number of Americans are stranded in that chaotic country. And Americans aren't the only ones in harm's way. The rapid collapse has displaced hundreds of thousands of desperate Afghans who fear the Taliban's medieval rule.
Americans across the political spectrum can sympathize with their plight. The Biden administration has proposed bringing 50,000 Afghans to the United States as refugees. Progressive groups say that figure is too low – and are calling for hundreds of thousands instead.
But those numbers are absurd. The United States doesn't have the capacity to process and thoroughly vet tens of thousands of Afghan refugees. Admitting them anyways would further jeopardize our national security.
One need look no further than the previous Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) and Direct Access P-2 Programs in Iraq to understand how ill-equipped we are to handle another massive influx of refugees. SIVs are designed for translators and interpreters who served directly with the U.S. military, while P-2 programs are meant for those who are not translators or interpreters but still face threats due to their collaboration with the U.S. government.
The P-2 Program employed to resettle Iraqi refugees was discontinued earlier this year due to widespread fraud. In fact, U.S. authorities are investigating roughly 4,000 Iraqis for filing fraudulent applications for resettlement in the United States and re-evaluating approximately 100,000 other cases.
The flawed refugee-screening mechanisms were also on display in 2009, when several dozen terrorists were suspected of being fraudulently admitted into the United States from Iraq. Two known al-Qaeda terrorists were confirmed to be let into the United States and were allowed to resettle in Bowling Green, KY.
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Similarly, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded from their review of the U.S. Refugee Admission Program that substantial fraud takes place in many of the Resettlement Support Centers (RSCs). Of particular concern is the fact that just 10% of Refugee Affairs Division Reports the GAO examined showed satisfaction with RSC case preparations.
The GAO found that State Department efforts to evaluate pre-screening and prepping of case files for resettlement applicants to be insufficient at RSCs and thus vulnerable to fraud.
To address these concerns, President Biden ordered a full review of the P-2 program, to implement anti-fraud measures that maintain the system's integrity. However, that report is yet to be released.
Earlier in August, Biden announced a P-2 program for certain Afghan nationals and family members who are not eligible for SIVs.
If the United States institutes P-2 designation for Afghan nationals before release of the review and implementation of its prescriptions, it'll invite fraud on a much grander scale -- and with much graver consequences: Polling has shown that millions of Afghans harbor extreme views, from favoring honor killings to believing that suicide bombings are sometimes justified.
Leaders who claim we can reliably vet all Afghan refugees, when the previous system used in Iraq resulted in an abundance of fraudulent applications and threats to our national security, aren't being honest with the American people.
Further, today's U.S. government demonstrates broad incompetence, from Transportation Security Administration airport screeners' 95-percent failure rate at intercepting test contraband to the slack immigration vetting of San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik (2015) to the Environmental Protection Agency's flooding Colorado's Animas River with orange, toxic mine waste (2015). Who believes that, with ill-documented Afghan refugees, suddenly the feds will perform?
Already during the Afghan evacuations, the British government suffered what could have been a devastating security breach. An individual on their "no-fly" list was allowed to board a flight out of Kabul and gain entry into the UK before officials thankfully caught their error.
It's one thing to bring over a few thousand trusted interpreters who've worked directly alongside our military for years. It's another thing entirely to jeopardize the lives of U.S. civilians by admitting tens or hundreds of thousands of incompetently vetted or wholly unvetted refugees. Let's not make an already tragic situation even worse.
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