President Joe Biden's administration is halting the temporary relocation of Afghans to the US as it pivots to a long-term programme that would focus on providing a pathway to permanent legal status for refugees.
The White House last year announced a programme, called Operation Allies Welcome, to allow Afghans to quickly enter the US by bypassing a years-long visa application. More than 80,000 refugees have entered the US through this programme, authorities said in July.
The revised policy, dubbed Enduring Welcome, begins on October 1 as part of Washington's newest phase to resettle evacuees after Afghanistan fell into the hands of the Taliban last year, US media reported on Thursday.
The administration’s “commitment to our Afghan allies is enduring,” a senior administration official said while briefing reporters on changes to the relocation policy. “This commitment does not have an end date.”
Under the latest policy, the US has established three categories through which Afghans can be resettled.
Applicants can qualify by being an immediate family member of either a US citizen, permanent resident or an evacuee settled within the last 12 months. Others can qualify via a Special Immigration Visa because of their efforts to assist during the war.
The final category is reserved for those at risk of retaliation from the Taliban, the official said.
Family members admitted from those categories will have “durable, long-term immigration status,” allowing them to “more quickly settle and integrate into their new communities,” the official said.
“We know family reunification remains a really high priority for Afghans themselves and for the communities who care about them and for advocates across the country, veterans groups as well,” said the official.
More than 74,000 applications were in the SIV pipeline as of July, the White House said. Administration officials previously said one or two forms for new SIV applicants would be eliminated to streamline the process.
The US government earlier this year reached an agreement with The National Conference Centre in Loudon County, Virginia, to serve as a "safe haven" to temporarily house Afghan evacuees. The operation was expected to end no later than September 2022, the county said.
Reuters contributed to this report
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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UK-EU trade at a glance
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Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
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The biog
Simon Nadim has completed 7,000 dives.
The hardest dive in the UAE is the German U-boat 110m down off the Fujairah coast.
As a child, he loved the documentaries of Jacques Cousteau
He also led a team that discovered the long-lost portion of the Ines oil tanker.
If you are interested in diving, he runs the XR Hub Dive Centre in Fujairah
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
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