According to a draft memo acquired by Fox News, President Biden intends to grant access to the United States to select Afghan state officials who worked for the Taliban by removing them from terror-related entry ban lists.
After a botched pullout in August that allowed the Taliban to quickly take over the country, the Biden administration has continued to evacuate Afghan citizens.
According to Mail Online, a new administration memorandum, which was reviewed and revealed in a Wednesday report, shows that some Afghans who worked for the Taliban government from 1996 to 2001 will not be subject to the same travel restrictions as other terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds (TRIG).
‘Many individuals who worked in civil service positions before the declaration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996 continued to do so after the declaration,’ the document states. ‘Some did so under duress or other situations of hardship.’
Some used their positions in humanitarian capacities to mitigate the repressive actions of the Taliban regime, often at great personal risk,’ it continues. ‘Some of these civil servants later worked for or helped the International Security Assistance Force, the U.S. government or the Afghan government that was established in Dec. 22, 2001.’
The exempt individuals will need to fulfill other background checks and screening requirements before being allowed to circumvent the terror-related travel restrictions to the U.S.
A Biden official told Fox the new memorandum won’t change existing screening and vetting processes for each individual coming to the U.S., noting similar exemptions have been made with refugees from countries like the Soviet Union and Cuba.
‘The effect [of the memo] is that people who worked as doctors, grade school teachers, civil servants or low-level government employees wouldn’t automatically be barred from ever entering the United States because they worked in those professions,’ the official said.
They also claimed that the memo’s status is in the ‘pre-decisional’ phase.
President Biden’s team is still working to evacuate thousands of Afghans in the fallout of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) planning document outlines how the Department of Homeland Security will issue the memorandum.
The exemption will come after the Taliban was swiftly able to regain control of Afghanistan after Biden withdrew all U.S. forces from the country at the end of August without any fail-safes in place to make sure the Afghan government did not fall.
The Islamic militant group was able to take over the country in less than two weeks.
The U.S. and other countries are now grappling with how to handle the new leadership in Afghanistan after 20 years of conflict.
