US embassy: No more Afghan refugees slated to travel to PH
No more Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants are expected to arrive in the Philippines, according to the United States embassy on Tuesday.
The embassy added that all the 200 Afghan applicants who arrived in the country early this month had already left the country last January 17 through commercial flights to the US.
“No further Afghan SIV applicants are expected to travel to the Philippines at this time,” US embassy spokesperson Kanishka Gangopadhyay said.
This announcement was made by the US embassy one day after President Donald Trump released a flurry of executive orders, which include the suspension of the US Refugee Admissions Program “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”
Manila and Washington had a yearlong negotiation to allow Afghan applicants to temporarily stay in the Philippines, but they finally settled on allowing 300 applicants to remain in the country as announced late last year.
But Gangopadhyay said while the original number was 300, some “prospective participants dropped due to medical issues,” decided to “withdraw from the program, or other considerations.”
When asked if it’s still possible for another 100 SIV applicants to arrive in the country in the future, Gangopadhyay said on January 19: “I won’t speculate on the future of this program.”
The Afghans seeking to resettle on western soil were citizens in Afghanistan who were employed or assisted by the US government before Washington withdrew its forces from the Middle Eastern country in 2021, when Taliban militants took over Kabul.
