Urge Congress to Provide a Path to Permanent Status for Afghan Parolees
As the United States welcomes many Afghans fleeing from the Taliban, many are coming to the United States under humanitarian parole. It is necessary for Congress to act to provide a way for these vulnerable folks to apply for a permanent status. If Congress fails to act, these Afghans will find themselves in an unstable, perpetual “temporary” status, alongside TPS and DACA recipients. Add your name to the letter below and ask your Members of Congress to provide a path to permanent status for all of these groups. The Evangelical Immigration Table will deliver the completed letter with the contact information of all signatories to the congressional delegation representing your state.
Dear Members of Congress,
As the U.S. prepares to welcome tens of thousands of Afghans, including many who were at risk for their service to the U.S. military or other parts of the U.S. government, I am among the many evangelical Christians in our state eager to ensure that they are welcomed well and able to integrate long-term into our community and our nation.
To do so, echoing the calls of many national evangelical Christian leaders, I urge you to support legislation to ensure that Afghans paroled into the United States have a direct process by which they can apply for permanent legal status.
Without such changes to law, the majority of Afghans whom our government is resettling using parole authority could end up with a perpetual “temporary” status that must be indefinitely renewed, at significant cost, without the opportunity to apply for permanent status that would affirm that they fully belong in this country.
There are already hundreds of thousands of individuals in our country – including the majority of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients who have been diligently renewing this “temporary” status for more than 20 years and many young people brought to the U.S. as children who must regularly renew their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) – who live with the possibility that their authorization to work lawfully could be withdrawn and they could be put at risk of deportation, even though at this point they have been living and working lawfully in the U.S. for years or even decades.
I urge you both to provide a path to Lawful Permanent Residence for these long-term TPS recipients, for DACA beneficiaries and other Dreamers and for our new Afghan neighbors with parole status, whom our government should not put into a similar situation of perpetual “temporary” status. It is both in these immigrant neighbors’ interest and in the interest of our society as a whole for our nation to formally affirm what we, as Christians, are eager to convey to these neighbors: that they are welcome here, that they belong and that the United States is now their home, just as it is ours.
