Trump Is Putting Venezuelan and Afghan Refugees at Risk of Losing Life or Liberty

Donald Trump is ending Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan refugees who had fled persecution by the Socialist dictatorship in Venezuela. Around 600,000 Venezuelans are legally present in America. I had mentioned in my last post that a Republican United States Representative had proposed legislation to protect Venezuelan refugees seeking asylum from persecution and refugees fleeing Communist Cuba and Marxist Nicaragua, who together constitute a plurality of refugees currently fleeing to America, including those non-Mexicans applying for asylum from Mexico through a special exception to the usual legal requirement of having to be on U.S. soil to claim asylum, but Trump’s latest move is targeting refugees already present. The ending of temporary protected status for Venezuelans and the closure of the asylum process in Mexico prove that the anti-migrant rhetoric by Trump and his supporters during the campaign misled some voters to believe that Trump would only oppose illegal immigration, as his restrictive policies, on top of an already-excessively restrictive immigration policy, also includes refugees who have followed the legal process. The anti-migrant demagogue also cancelled a program shortly after taking office that helped provide visas to Afghans who worked for the U.S. or who for its Afghan government ally who would face retaliation, including death, from the Islamist Taliban de facto Afghan regime. Around 15,000 Afghans had cleared the process, which takes years, as it includes a reference from an American government official, a background check, a health screening and an interview. During his first term, “pro-life” Trump had implemented redundancies in the program and cut its staff and budget willfully to put America’s Afghan allies and their families at risk because of his demagoguery. The U.S. has taken in many Afghans and gotten its allies around the world to re-settle tens of thousands of others. The ending of the visa program for Afghan allies, which even came as some of the Afghans were scheduled to be on flights out of the Central Asian State, left many of the 15,000 Afghans in legal limbo in Pakistan, Qatar and Albania, where they were temporarily staying, in addition to the rest in hiding in Afghanistan. American veterans have been working for years to help get Afghan allies out of Afghanistan, as the U.S. had promised in exchange for their work for the American-led international coalition that overthrew the Taliban in 2021 after it had harbored the al-Qaeda Islamist terrorists responsible for the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks on America that killed a record 3,000 people. Thus, ending the visa program for Afghan allies puts American security at risk by discouraging allies from risking their lives and that of their families to work for the U.S. The program had strong bipartisan congressional support. We conservatives should urge Congress to restore the program. As I have noted, Trump’s xenophobic policies against refugees, whether fleeing persecution in Venezuela, Afghanistan or anywhere else, do not protect America from significant threats, but deprive America of the benefit of people who have special insight into tyranny and a greater appreciation for liberty than Americans can possibly have. Such policies also dangerously undermine belief in the American creed that every human being has a birthright of freedom.