On HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver recently shone a light on something unworthy of this great nation: our abandonment of foreigners to whom we owe a great debt.
Oliver’s focus was on Afghan translators who “risk their lives helping [US servicemembers] . . . and because of that, they are permanent targets of insurgents.”
The good news is there’s a special visa program to help them find refuge in the United States. The bad news? There’s a backlog of nearly 5,000, and getting the visa can take years.
As a result, many translators are forced to remain in hiding — often seeing family members killed or kidnapped — as they wait out the visa process. And the program itself will expire at the end of this year.
It’s not only translators. Mohammed Gulab hid and nursed a badly wounded Marcus Luttrell after an ambush on a team of Navy SEALs in Afghanistan. The story was immortalized in a film called “Lone Survivor.” Gulab came to America for the movie’s opening but was denied a green card and had to return to Afghanistan, where he’s hunted by the Taliban.
Or Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA identify the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
When Afridi’s role became known, he was tried for treason on trumped-up charges and is now serving a 23-year prison sentence. While members of Congress have spoken out about Afridi’s condition, our State Department has been largely silent and plainly ineffectual.
If this is how we treat our friends, can we really wonder why we’re finding it hard these days to find anyone willing to stick his neck out for Uncle Sam?