afghanistan. there is a huge difference between 6,015,000. what happened to these other americans. the situation with the special immigrant visa is even more disturbing. not counting the sivs that arrived before kabul s fall, you evacuated 705 of roughly 20,000 principle siv applicants. what happened to these people? this committee reached out to the department in april, may and june to help expedite siv processing. we asked that additional what additional authorities or resources you needed for months we received contradictory responses or no response at all. i ll take a minute to defend the state department. one of the problem was providing the records needed to validate the afghans who bravely helped our forces. the fact that d.o.d. didn t keep accurate records is irresponsible and a slap in the face to those who fought
those resources. as i said, we quadrupled the number of people in washington doing processing of sivs and this is at a critical stage in the processing as i think many members know. the most important stage in many ways is the so-called chief administration approval, the stage at which siv applicants are deemed eligible under the criteria established by congress for the program. and by the way, those who apply, those who actually get approval, the wash out rate is about 40% historically. that is because it turns out that many people who apply don t qualify under the criteria set by congress or they re unable to get the documentation. i think this was alluded to, to prove they have worked for the united states. there are some situations where people are committing fraud in order to get into the program. maybe for understandable reasons. but the point is, we have a very
as well as offers of help including financial assistance to pay for plane tickets. despite this efforts, at the time of the evacuation began, there were still thousands of americans in afghanistan. almost all of whom were evacuated by august 31st. many were dual citis living in afghanistan for years, decades, generations. deciding whether or not to leave the place that they know as home is a wrenching decision. in april, we began drawing down our embassy ordering nonessential personnel to depart. we also used this time to significantly speed up the processing of special immigrant visas for afghans who worked for us. when we took office, we inherited a program with a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by congress involving multiple agencies. and a backlog of more than 17,000 siv applicants. there had not been a single siv applicant interview in kabul in
afghanistan. there s a huge difference between 6,000 and 15,000. what happened to these other americans? the situation with the special immigrant visa evacuations is more disturbing. not counting the sivs that arrived before kabul s fall, you evacuated 750 of roughly 20,000 principle siv applicants. what happened to these people? this committee reached out in april, may, and june to help with processing. we asked what additional resources you needed. for months, we received contradictory responses or no responses. i ll take a minute to defend the state department. one of the biggest problems to help process these is the enormous failure the department of defense to provide the records needed to validate the afghans to helped our forces. the fact that dod didn t keep accurate records is irresponsible and a slap in the