there had not been a single siv applicant interview in kabul going back to march of 2020. the program was basically in a stall. within two weeks of taking office we restarted the siv reprocess in kabul. february 4th one of the first executive orders issued by president biden directed us to immediately review the siv program to review causes of delay and process applications more quickly. this spring i directed significant additional resources to the program expanding the team of people in washington processing applications from 10 to 50, doubling the number of siv adjudicateors in our embassy in kabul. as many embassy personnel began to return under order of departure, we sent more consular officers to kabul to process siv applications. as a result of these and other steps, including working with
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
his parent say he was the best son parents could ask for. how will staff sergeant hoover be remembered? as an american hero. these young men and women showed passion and courage to help evacuate those who would come here legally. it s very much in keeping with our extraordinary national heritage. you have said it s unthinkable that the u.s. would leave anyone behind. you heard jake sullivan talk about how august 31st is not a cliff and some people might be left behind. to be fair, the white house says another terrorist attack at the airport is imminent, which is obviously complicating the evacuation efforts. should the u.s. stay? should there be a u.s. military presence in the kabul airport until every american citizen and legal permanent resident and afghan siv applicant is gone, even if that means service
but this is the situation we re in. regardless of how we got here. and there is this very real trade-off we were talking on my show before the terrorist attack. the risk of keeping american service members there is what happened thursday. so, if we stay there until no american and no afghan siv applicant is left behind, we risk more events like thursday. if you focus on what we should do right now, recognize we re in the position we re in right now because of terrible decisions made by two administrations. one, the trump administration negotiating directly with the taliban, getting ready to invite them to camp david, opening up a prison of 5,000 taliban and probably isis-k individuals and letting them free. we don t know whether some of them were involved in the attack
airport and all kinds of other ways. i wouldn t want to get into the details again because there are people looking for us. bill: how can we help? we need to raise money. nobody pays for a seat, nobody at all. so if you are an evacuee, american, siv applicant, whatever you are, nobody pays for a seat period, the end. however, helicopters cost money, planes cost money and pilots cost money so we re fundraising. our website is project dynamo.org. we re 100% privately funded but we need fuel. we have maintenance problems and all kinds of issues. it is an austere and challenging environment from every aspect. political to tactical not to mention the threat piece. not to mention the transportation. bill: we have been hyper focused on kabul.