There are "literally millions" of people who would want to move to the United States, if they could, from Afghanistan, but the Biden administration must know where to draw the line and might not know how, Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said on Newsmax Monday.
"I'm not sure the administration right now, with the president having his morning ice cream, is in any position to go through that kind of rigorous thinking," Krikorian told Newsmax's "National Report," noting that even before the Taliban seized the Afghanistan capital of Kabul over the weekend, "almost everybody" there wanted to move to the West."
"The administration is now in no position to make sure we can extricate our people and the handful of genuine translators in uniform who worked in combat with our soldiers," he said.
"They basically run away and abandon the ability even to have a kind of controlled situation in getting our people out of there."
Meanwhile, there are two types of special immigrant visas that would relate to the developing situation in Afghanistan, he said.
"One is very limited and is the one that everybody supports," Krikorian said. "That is for people who were in uniform, translators and interpreters for our soldiers. These are people who risk their lives in combat operations with American soldiers. They should be able to come in. There's no question about it, but that is a very narrow category, which is why it only covers 50 people a year because there just aren't that many people like that."
The other is a special immigrant visa covering people who served in capacities such as driving for members of the press or as "fixers" for non-government organizations,' he explained.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration must prioritize American citizens, said Krikorian, even though there was a statement that it would not specifically do that, "which is preposterous of course."
He pointed out that the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., think-tank, doesn't get involved in foreign policy, but personally, he said he "was and remains convinced that we needed to get out of Afghanistan" and adding more years would have just made "losing slower."
Krikorian, meanwhile, slammed the administration's handling of the crisis at the Mexican border and looming evacuee situation in Afghanistan as "complete incompetence."
"It's not even an issue of worldview," said Krikorian. "They're trying to use immigration for some kind of political purposes. They just literally have no idea what they're doing...I think a lot of it is simply a matter of having no idea what to do."
He also commented on a federal judge's order over the weekend for the Biden administration to revive former President Donald Trump's remain in Mexico program on immigration, saying he's not sure the decision will make any difference.
"It's a lot easier, as we saw under Trump, for a court to stop an administration from doing something than to force them to actually do something affirmatively," said Krikorian.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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