NEW YORK - In 2007, the United States Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 which included a provision (Section 1244) for the issuance of Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for Iraqi civilians who “provided faithful and valuable service to the United States Government” during the 2003 invasion and the war that followed.
A clarification of this provision was made in mid-2008 when an amendment to the original piece of legislation was passed, making it abundantly clear that 5,000 SIVs specifically for these Iraqis were to be available immediately.
Fast forward to today: Only 5,500 of the total 25,000 SIVs that were supposed to go to Iraqi refugees from 2008 to 2013 have actually been issued. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the program is set to expire in a matter of months.
“For me, it was nerve racking,” says former-US army translator Barzan Gulha about his SIV application, “I applied right away.”
After two years you stop feeling like a tourist. 
Gulha is a native of Sulaimani in Iraqi Kurdisan, but after getting his SIV he relocated to San Antonio, Texas, in the southwestern United States. Living in the US “is not too hard for me,” he says of his new home. “After two years you stop feeling like a tourist.”
But Gulha’s process to get an SIV was not so easy.
“It takes several months,” he says. “When you apply you have to have a letter from your supervisor -- a general, a sergeant, etc. You submit it to the SIV people and within two or three weeks they send back a form. You get that filled out and then you return it.”
Once this form is submitted, Gulha says, it’s at the mercy of a proverbial alphabet soup of organizations: the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCID), and a variety of others.
Once your application is finally through the ringer, “you go to the embassy in Baghdad, where they give you a medical exam.” After the medical exam, he explains, you have to sit down for an interview, “usually it’s just one interview, but it could be more than one if you’re missing some documentation.” Luckily, Gulha had all of his documentation in order, so all he had to do was submit his application. After about one more week, Gulha’s visa was approved.
But not everyone has been so lucky.
It’s not every day you get Grover Norquist and Ted Kennedy in the same room.
According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit from 2010, for the first two fiscal years the program in effect only averaged 1,514 visas per year, even though 5,000 SIVs for principal applicants (i.e. those who had actually served alongside the US military; a number which excludes family members of such applicants) were authorized for issuance each of those years.
“It’s so random,” Gulha says regarding the SIV process. “I have a friend in Suleimani who has been waiting for his SIV for two years.” Meanwhile, he notes, he knew a translator with Kurdish connections who was able to get SIVs for himself and his entire family after only one year. That was surprising, because Gulha had trouble getting his after working for the US for four years.
One of the other major issues with the SIV -- which is somewhat fixed by the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act of 2007 -- has been that applicants can only bring their spouses and children, but not their parents or siblings.
Abdulrazzaq Zanjeel, an Iraqi Arab who worked as a driver for different American media outlets in Baghdad and now works as a shuttle driver for a tourist resort in Texas, says that he could have used the SIV, but chose to participate in the larger refugee resettlement program.
The process was difficult and much longer, but it has allowed him to help get visas for other members of his family as well. Zanjeel is still bringing his family in, with his uncle having just arrived in the US last week and a nephew coming later this month.
But it is not all easy for these visa applicants either. His sister, who is still in Iraq, has been waiting for four years for her visa. “They tell her ‘Your case is in process’ he says.
Even amidst all the bureaucratic red-tape that exists in American refugee efforts, programs like the SIV have -- for the most part -- made the process at least somewhat easier.
According to Amelia Templeton, a journalist for Oregon’s local NPR affiliate who worked for Human Rights First during the push to get Section 1244 in the Defense Authorization Act, “the resettlement program wasn’t helping them,” and so a strangely large coalition of bipartisan heavy-weight’s threw themselves into the ring to help make Section 1244 law.
The U.S. has a responsibility to follow through on our promise to protect those Iraqis and Afghans who have risked their lives to aid our troops and protect America’s security.
The State Department’s Rachel Schneller, the New Yorker’s George Packer, Jason Faler’s Check Point One Foundation, ultra-Conservative Grover Norquist, Frank Crucker, long-time refugee expert Julia Taft, and the late Ted Kennedy (the US Senate’s so-called “Liberal Linon”), all offered their support for Section 1244. “It’s not every day you get Grover Norquist and Ted Kennedy in the same room.”
And the program has maintained this bipartisan backing. With the program set to expire soon, a group of nineteen members of Congress from across the spectrum have petitioned President Barack Obama to fight to keep the SIV program around so it can complete its mission.
“It is important to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the SIV programs,” they write, citing the backlog of applicants -- 5,000 completed applications for the sister program in Afghanistan alone -- as a primary reason the program should be continued, noting how, “Often, sterling SIV applications are denied, and perhaps for good reason, but under the current program the Chief of the Mission (COM) at Embassies Baghdad and Kabul can approve or deny an applicant with little transparency into how the decision was made. Further, SIV applicants have no means of challenging or appealing an adverse COM decision.”
Now, with the US confronted with immigration reform legislation, it seems like an opportune time for the nation to make provisions to continue the SIV program and make it more efficient and more available for qualified Iraqi and Afghan allies. Adding provisions for appeals of COM decisions, going through the thousands of backlogged applications, and even adding provisions making it even easier for family members of American allies to get their applications looked at.
