In effect, President Trump and aide Stephen Miller greatly increased the vetting workload and then starved the system of resources to do the job.
The number of SIVs issued dropped by the hundreds. Iraqi SIVs fell from 557 in 2017 to 152 in 2019; the number of Afghan SIVs went from 4,120 in 2017 to 1,799 in 2020, as the number of applicants ballooned.
The processing time for Afghan SIV applicants in early 2021 reached 703 days.
Link: https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/570076-how-trump-broke-the-system-that-offers-protection-to-afghan-allies
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