people a number of them are still at transit points around the world but it would be tens of thousands? realistically, two things, one, we talked about this a little earlier, but of the applicants in the program, the as i said, we inherited about 18,000. about half of those this remains more or less the case now, are at a point where it s before the chief admission has given his or her approval that they are in fact, eligible for the program. i am looking for a number, and i guess the question i was leading to, is given the fact that the siv process was so slow and not undertaken during the trump years in the specific way, you sped it up and that s great although you knew that there was no way you were going to get all these people out in time given the rapid collapse of the afghan security forces, and you said yesterday that you inherited a
involved in the evacuation of so many people under such a short period of time under such difficult circumstances. i want to get to where we are today. during this process, the state department was very open to all members of congress, democrats, republicans, as we filtered information into you about vulnerable people and in an effort to get them out of afghanistan. today our offices are still being delugeed by requests to help people that are in afghanistan, ngos are working very aggressively. can you share with us the process you are using in order to filter information aboufosiv and those afghans that are at risk, how do we transmit that information and what process is in place so we can try to get these people out of afghanistan? thank you, senator.
but it is important that we go back and look at all this. time has expired. thank you. senator sidney. thank you, mr. chairman and secretary blinken for appearing before the committee today. i appreciate and share the frustration of my colleagues over the challenges of the evacuation, and over the situation of special immigrant visa applicants and the taliban s treatment of women and girls and other minorities, and i also agree with your assessment and that has been given by several others of that where we were when we got to the evacuation, was because of the failed republican and democratic administrations. starting with senator mccain, i and others in the senate tried to get more special immigrant visa applicants through the process so that they could leave afghanistan, leave the threat
back and look at all of this. the time has expired. thank you. senator shaheen. thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you secretary blinken for appearing for the committee today. i appreciate and share the frustration of my colleagues over the challenges with the evacuation, over the situation of special immigrant visa applicants and the taliban treatment of women and girls and other mine oorities and i also agree that assessment and given by several others that where we were when we got that that evacuation was because of the failure of both democratic and republican administrations. and i want to know where that outrage was when year after year for ten years starting with senator mccain, i and others in the senate tried to get more special immigrant visa applicants through the process so that they could leave afghanistan, leave the threat and come to the united states.
so the siv numbers, that we re tabulating right now because we re trying to account for every one who has come in. some people remain in transit countries. other people are now in the united states. we re putting all of those numbers together to determine the overwhelming majority of afghans who have come out of afghanistan thanks to our evacuation efforts are in one way or another afghans at risk. some will be siv applicants and others will be p-1 or p-2 or afghans at risk. we re breaking down the numbers and we should have a break down in the next couple of weeks. thank you. looking forward to seeing that. mr. rubio. in your statement i think the most troubling thing is the following quote, even the most pessimistic assess. did not predict the government forces in kabul would collapse while u.s. forces remained and you also cite general milley who said there was no indication that there would be a rapid collapse of the afghan army and