We’ve heard a lot about how the Afghans evacuated from Kabul are being thoroughly vetted in third countries {snip}

{snip}

The irrelevance of the vetting process is twofold. First, vetting is only as good as the information you have to vet people against. I have little doubt that the DHS employees and others who are doing the vetting are dedicated public servants, genuinely trying their best. And those Afghans (though not necessarily their family members) who were previously employed by our military or embassy were vetted before employment, and periodically during employment, too. Even this isn’t foolproof; former Army platoon leader (and current Senate candidate) Sean Parnell told Tucker Carlson of his unit’s extensively vetted Afghan interpreter who ended up betraying his American comrades. {snip}

But the evacuation from Kabul was so haphazard and rushed that many, perhaps most, of those extracted were not such previously screened people. Representative Tom Tiffany (R., Wis.) told the Washington Times that of the 2,000 Afghans housed at a base in his state, not one had the Special Immigrant Visa for Afghans employed by, or on behalf of, the U.S. government. And at least one previously deported convicted rapist appears to have landed at Dulles already.

So, how to screen those Afghans who’ve never been screened? Given Afghanistan’s low level of development, it’s not like the record-keeping there was ever comprehensive and efficient, if it existed at all. And worse, as 30-year INS/ICE veteran Dan Cadman pointed out on my “Parsing Immigration Policy” podcast last week, while we occupied Afghanistan, we at least had a chance of verifying claims that people made. Now that we have left and a hostile force is in charge, what are supposed to do, call up the Kabul DMV to verify someone’s identity? {snip}

The second problem is perhaps worse. Suppose we do somehow stumble upon incriminating information in the process of vetting, information that suggests an Afghan evacuee is a security threat or inadmissible for some other reason – what then?

We can’t deport them back to Afghanistan.

We can’t release them in Qatar or Bahrain or wherever we’re holding them; those countries only agreed to temporarily host the Afghans we flew in and certainly would not agree to take a potential threat off our hands.

Conclusion: We’re just going to resettle them in the U.S. regardless of the results of vetting.

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