Tennessee senators should support the Afghan Adjustment Act | Opinion

On Aug. 26, 2021, my teammates and I were on an urgent mission to get a female athlete through Kabul’s Abbey Gate onto the airport grounds after she’d spent hours in a massive crowd, under hot sun without water, trying to reach her evacuation flight.

We were running out of time before the flight left. We needed a miracle. Could she get the attention of one of the Marines we saw in her photos of her surroundings? (We were working this operation from our homes far from Afghanistan.) It was a big ask when desperate thousands begged for Marines’ attention.

But somehow one of them accepted her phone. I was on the other end of the line and will never forget his confused young voice as I passed him a message. He acted on the message. Now the talented athlete is building a new life in the U.S.

Then just hours later, a suicide bomber attacked those Abbey Gate crowds, taking the lives of 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghans. I had no way of knowing whether “my” Marine was among them.

I'm a civilian, and that day, so close — virtually — to the devastation, the magnitude of what our service members sign up for became viscerally real. As did the reason they feel a debt to the Afghan allies they — we, our U.S. government — promised never to leave behind.

I’m committed, like my military colleagues, to keeping our promise. Over a year later, so many volunteers like me are still working on the relocation effort, largely out of the limelight and headlines.

As Afghans have made their way from chaos to our safe communities, other Tennesseans have taken up the baton and volunteered in ways we're are so good at, warmly welcoming new Afghan neighbors across our state. This is the best of who we are. I was once one of these local volunteers helping with English classes for new arrivals in Nashville, learning how such new neighbors benefit our communities.

But despite all these volunteers, the path to safety is taking too long. Too many Afghan allies remain behind, in mortal danger or still in limbo even in the U.S. Part of this work can be done only by our government.

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Our U.S. senators have written letters to the Biden administration and made strong statements from the Senate floor, rightly calling out the administration’s disastrous military withdrawal, demanding action on behalf of our allies, including endangered Afghan women and girls.

But despite months of conversations with their offices, they haven’t committed as cosponsors, or even indicated support, of the Afghan Adjustment Act, a thoroughly bipartisan bill that provides real action, rather than just big words. The Afghan Adjustment Act does many things our senators have asked the government for this past year, so it should be a no-brainer for them to support it.

The act follows the model of standard bipartisan adjustment of status legislation passed after U.S. wartime withdrawals from Vietnam and Iraq. Heavily negotiated between Republican and Democratic sponsors in the House and Senate, the bill would allow Afghans who entered the U.S. under humanitarian parole status — a temporary permission to reside here — to request permanent residency and go through substantive security vetting equivalent to vetting required under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program — considered the gold standard of vetting.

This bill is the answer to the less-than-ideal initial vetting for Afghans hurried to the U.S. during the evacuation. It encourages these Afghans to present themselves for more rigorous vetting in order to receive legal permission to remain in the U.S.

The Afghan Adjustment Act also expands eligibility for Special Immigrant Visas to certain categories of Afghans trained by U.S. special forces. Creating a pathway to the U.S. for these highly trained allies is critical for U.S. national security. It is profoundly short-sighted for national-security-conscious senators not to protect this U.S. asset by providing for these forces to escape the Taliban.

The Afghan Adjustment Act is egregiously overdue, and its best chance now is to be included in the mid-December omnibus spending bill. Our Afghan allies and the volunteers who continue the emotionally draining, around-the-clock work of assisting them need fellow Tennesseans to remind our senators to represent our Tennessee values — love for America, our veterans and our new neighbors — by supporting the Afghan Adjustment Act. Call Marsha Blackburn's office at 202-224-3344 and Bill Hagerty's at 202-224-4944.

This is an action you can take, a tangible way for you to honor the lives lost at Kabul’s Abbey Gate last August.

Kami Rice is cofounder of AlliedShepherd.org, a member organization of the Afghan Evac Coalition.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Opinion: Tennessee senators should support the Afghan Adjustment Act