Guest columnist Keith Peterson: Separated from family, Afghan scholar still waiting for U.S. to do the right thing

Eighteen months ago, I wrote about three Afghans who had been awarded Fulbright scholarships and who had managed to leave Afghanistan just as the Taliban fighters were walking into Kabul to overthrow the U.S.-backed government.

I recently met with one of them, who I will call R, who is at an elite university and will soon graduate with his master's degree. That, however, will mark the beginning of a period of great uncertainty and not the beginning of a bright new chapter in his life.

Unlike the other two, he has not been able to get his wife out of Afghanistan. Unlike the other two, he has children - two daughters - one who was born just after he arrived in America. He has only seen her on his phone.

The first impediment was a passport for the new daughter. Corruption is rife and the family ultimately paid a $1,000 bribe for a passport in a country where the annual per capita income is just over $500. The second issue was getting them to Pakistan - in this case Peshawar - where, at the U.S. consulate, his wife was denied a visa she should have been eligible for. R is still trying to sort out why from 7,000 miles away.

R should be able to stay in the United States, not only as a scholar who is allowed to pursue further training, but because he worked for USAID. He has a pending claim for a Special Immigrant Visa, granted to Afghans who worked for the Americans and are thus vulnerable to retribution from the Taliban. He should, under the circumstances, also be eligible for asylum because his fear of persecution is well founded. But, as he notes, these processes are hopelessly backlogged.

There has been an attempt to do the right thing. A bipartisan group of senators and representatives - including Reps. Sean Casten, Bill Foster and Jan Schakowsky - co-sponsored the Afghan Adjustment Act to give evacuated Afghans a pathway to permanent status in the U.S. It would be similar to past programs for Cubans, Vietnamese and Iraqis.

Despite bipartisan support and broad support from military leaders, human rights NGOs and organizations that include the VFW, American Legion and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, would not allow the bill to proceed over concerns that some of the Afghans who were evacuated in the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal were not properly vetted. The Act tries to address this by requiring another layer of robust vetting.

I reached out to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat and one of the lead sponsors of the AAA, who said: "More than 75,000 Afghans who sought refuge in our country are currently in limbo, including many who risked their own lives and their family's safety to protect our service members. Giving our Afghan allies who undergo additional vetting a chance to apply for legal status is the right and necessary thing to do. I'm committed to continuing to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stand with the people who stood with us and provide Afghans who sought refuge in the United States with a pathway to remain here."

If the situation were different, R would want to return home to help rebuild his country, but two things, in particular, were deeply sobering during our conversation in a noisy coffee shop on the edge of his campus. The first was his view that the Taliban will remain "because there is no alternative." The second was the photo of his six-year-old daughter with bright eyes and a smile and a future that is anything but bright as long as she remains in Afghanistan.

America must do the right thing.

• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.