FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: media@projectanar.org

February 6, 2024 | Washington, DC   

Project ANAR Rejects Anti-Asylum Bill

Project ANAR opposes the anti-asylum policies included in the Senate’s supplemental spending bill. We reject any measure that leverages our community members as bargaining chips to push detrimental immigration policies. We have spent weeks rallying and meeting with lawmakers to push back on these negotiations. It is shameful but unsurprising that U.S. politicians insist on including Afghan Adjustment within a bill that otherwise harms communities like ours and people within our community.  

For over four decades, we have witnessed the U.S. government treat Afghans as a political tool. While nothing can fully repair the harm done to Afghans through years of militarism, occupation, and humanitarian catastrophes, it is plain that the U.S. has a moral obligation to ensure access to immigration for Afghans. 

Because the U.S. has failed to meaningfully provide this access in recent years, Afghans, like so many others, have been left to find their own pathways to the U.S. to seek asylum–a critical form of protection that is deeply rooted in international and U.S. law. This bill would eliminate the minimal safeguards of the current asylum process, making it even less accessible.

It is not lost on us that these measures are included in a bill that funds the ongoing genocide against Palestinians. Instead of investing in our communities and expanding access to safety, the Biden administration and Members of Congress are tying foreign aid to policies that will undermine access to asylum, intensify surveillance and policing, and subject more Afghans and others to immigration incarceration for daring to seek better futures for themselves and their families. 

We urge lawmakers to divest from violence. We stand in solidarity with all displaced, occupied, and policed people, from the U.S.-Mexico border, to Palestine, to Afghanistan. We stand against any funding and policies that bring nothing but the opposite. Protections for some Afghans cannot come at the expense of other Afghans and other immigrant communities. 

We work towards a world where Afghans and all people live with safety, dignity, and freedom to move, rather than being forced to fight for the bare minimum. We deserve more than to have to fight against the imposition of stricter standards on asylum-seekers, who should not be forced through a system built to deport them to begin with.We continue to call for standalone immigration protections for Afghans. We have been urging for humanitarian pathways for Afghans for nearly three years, and this bill would codify policies that effectively eliminate one of the only pathways many Afghans and others have left. 

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Project ANAR is an Afghan community immigration justice organization formed and led by Afghan American women immigration lawyers and organizers, that focuses on legal services, community education, and advocacy and engagement. Project ANAR’s objectives include obtaining permanent status for Afghans in the U.S., advocating for the expansion of pathways for those seeking refuge, and seeking an end to the systems that displace our communities. Project ANAR works primarily in the Bay Area, California and in the DMV region, and also engages in national level advocacy and legal services work.