Afghan American Community Organizations Urge Congress to Pass Afghan Adjustment Act

Afghan American Community Organizations Urge Congress to Pass Afghan Adjustment Act

Press Contact: Arash Azizzada, arash@weareafghans.org, 202-277-5481

July 19, 2023

WASHINGTON DC – Today, a diverse group of Afghan American community and Afghan-led organizations wrote a letter to members of Congress, urging them to “swiftly and without delay, pass the Afghan Adjustment Act in this Congress.” The letter represents a diverse set of interests within the Afghan American community throughout the United States, all of whom urged Congress to uphold its promises to Afghans who were evacuated in the wake of the Taliban takeover of the country in August of 2021.

The Afghan Adjustment Act (S.2327/H.R.4627) was re-introduced last week by a bipartisan group of elected officials in both the Senate and the House. The bill would allow for a legal pathway to permanent status for almost 100,000 new Afghan arrivals, who were evacuated in the wake of the Taliban takeover from Afghanistan. If enacted, the Afghan Adjustment Act would also broaden Special Immigrant Visa eligibility for those left behind and ensure future accountability mechanisms for those at-risk Afghans seeking refuge in the U.S. Congress has passed similar large-scale adjustments of status for populations of war-time evacuations in the past.

“Today, over 95,000 evacuated Afghans are now our friends, community members, neighbors, and co-workers across the U.S.,” the collective of organizations wrote in the letter. “It has taken a whole-of-society effort to welcome Afghans to the U.S. and that work is not over. Afghan-Americans have carried the impact of this work deeply and uniquely, given the personal, multi-generational weight it has had on our community. We have been responsible for supporting our community through an incredibly burdensome, backlogged, and unnecessarily re-traumatizing legal system. While we have been able to work together to step up and assist our new community members across the country, it falls on Congress to address their need for permanent protections in the U.S.” 

Advocates are hoping that the recent momentum around the bill will ensure that the Adjustment Act gets included in the NDAA. The bill has found steadfast bipartisan support from both sides of the aisle. 

“Today, we reminded Congress yet again about the debt it owes to Afghans,” says Arash Azizzada, co-director for Afghans For A Better Tomorrow (AFBT). “Passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act would be a down payment on that debt, allowing our new arrivals to thrive rather than survive.”

You can read the full letter here.