Thread by @Pinboard

"The U.S. has asked Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to take in about 9,000 Afghans who assisted with the American occupation." There are over 18,000 of these applicants, over 50,000 family members, and they deserve US green cards, not this weak shit. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Creating a large refugee group of the people who helped us most in Afghanistan, rather than simply welcoming them to America to our mutual benefit, shows the ineradicable xenophobia at the heart of all US policy in the Islamic world.

We know what happens when you let Syrians, Palestinians, Afghans, Yemenis, Somalis etc. become Americans. They build a new life, work their asses off, and help family back home like anyone else. Treating them like dangerous bacilli who must not enter US borders is disgraceful

Biden lacks heart. Trump at least followed his convictions on immigration.

The irony of it all is that a place like Yemen is basically Kentucky. A bunch of conservative, religious truck-loving gun nuts who don't trust the government and are all about family. If Republicans weren't so bigoted they could have won a permanent majority through immigration

America's secret weapon used to be that wherever you were from, you could become American and go hog-wild with patriotism in the first generation. Even the Secretary of State had a strong accent. The fact that Biden talks about this but lacks the guts to act on it is what rankles

The last two times we let in large numbers of war refugees we got:

1) Nuclear energy
2) A ridiculously successful Southeast Asian diaspora and avocado smoothies

And I'm probably forgetting some big waves here. Let the damn Afghans in!

The thing that rankles me most about the Afghans being sent to neighboring countries is that they're on the US visa track. They'll get their visas soon enough. Why not just let them come and start their new lives in the US with their families while the bureaucracy churns?

The implicit fear is that some of these applicants are dangerous terrorists who have masked their intentions. But that just makes the United States, a superpower of over 300 million, look weak and cowardly. We have plenty of dangerous terrorists already, domestically produced.

This is the same way we treat refugees, incidentally. The few who get permission to settle in the US have to wait for years in holding camps for the process to clear, instead of just being allowed to come and live on provisional status, and be welcomed by their new home country.

If you want desperate people to stop trying to cross the border illegally, then you have to start treating legal immigrants, especially people who risked their lives to help your soldiers stay alive in their own country, with dignity and respect.