US rejecting over 90% of Afghan refugees

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Since July 2021, before the end of its two-decade occupation of Afghanistan, the US has received more than 46,000 applications from Afghans seeking humanitarian refuge in the US.

However, of the fully adjudicated requests, 90% have been denied, according to the CBS.

Of the 46,000 applications, so far 4,246 have been rejected, while only 297 have been approved.

US President Joe Biden released a statement earlier saying that the US is working "tirelessly" to welcome refugees and provide them with essential support.

Since the fall of Kabul last summer, the US has resettled some 76,000 Afghan refugees, but there seems to be a backlog of around 40,000 visa applicants who are still waiting.

Moreover, according to a report by ProPublica released in March, it seems that shelters and centers in the US that are taking care of children evacuated from Afghanistan without their parents are still responding to the trauma of the young Afghans.

So far, at least three shelters in Michigan and Illinois have shut down or stopped their operations after they took in groups of Afghan children, and the children were moved from one facility to another.

These children “left their homes with a dream to be stable, to be happy, to be safe. If we cannot offer that here in the US that is a big failure," Naheed Samadi Bahram, US country director for the nonprofit Women for Afghan Women said.

Overall, more than 1,400 children were brought to the US without their parents and placed in the custody of the US Office of Refugee Resettlement. More than 1,200 of these went on to live with sponsors (who are normally relatives or family friends).

The remaining 190 children are teenage boys with no one in the US to take care of them. More than 80 of the children have been in ORR custody for at least five months. The ORR system is designed to house children for about a month, normally, but the children now feel they've been waiting in seemingly never-ending detention.