Storella Comments on U.S. Efforts to Protect Afghan Allies
In an appearance on Allies – a Lawfare/Goat Rodeo podcast that traces the U.S.’s efforts to protect Afghan interpreters, translators and other partners through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program – Ambassador Mark Storella, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, describes his experience working on the SIV program and explains how the Trump administration intentionally broke the program.
In his remarks, Storella says that most of the team working to ensure the protection of Afghan allies “were deeply proud of the fact that our country is a country of immigrants, a country that has offered protection to people.” Most working on the program, he says, “thought that these traditions…reflected some of the best impulses of our country, of our society, of the American people.”
The SIV vetting process already was “the most rigorous screening process for anyone entering the United States of any type,” and Storella says the Trump Administration’s introduction of “Extreme Vetting” rules was redundant, ineffective, and hard to implement. The rules multiplied the workload for vetting, and the Trump administration stripped or diverted the resources necessary to make it work. Storella argues that many Afghans who risked their lives to support the U.S. war effort are now themselves under threat from the Taliban in part because the Trump administration broke the program meant to offer them protection.
The full podcast can be listened to below.
Ambassador Mark C. Storella was a United States Foreign Service Officer for over three decades serving as Ambassador to Zambia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, and Dean of the Leadership and Management School of the Foreign Service Institute. Storella is recipient of the Presidential Rank Award, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Excellence in Service Award, the Thomas Jefferson Award presented by American Citizens Abroad, and several Department of State superior and meritorious honor awards. Learn more about Ambassador Storella on his faculty profile.