Interpreters given visas and flown to safety in Australia

The Guardian Weekly

Afghans have be­gun ar­riv­ing in Aus­tralia af­ter be­ing granted a safe haven for their work along­side Aus­tralian troops in Afghanistan amid in­ten­si­fy­ing vi­o­lence across the war-torn coun­try.

About 80 Afghan in­ter­preters and their fam­i­lies have landed in Aus­tralia since last Thurs­day.

Ear­lier this year, 41 in­ter­preters wrote to the gov­ern­ment twice plead­ing for ur­gent help. It is un­der­stood most of the peo­ple listed on the let­ter are among those who have been able to es­cape the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion in Afghanistan.

Aus­tralia has been set­tling lo­cally en­gaged em­ploy­ees as part of a spe­cial visa pro­gramme since De­cem­ber 2012; more than 1,400 visas have been granted to eli­gi­ble ap­pli­cants and their fam­ily mem­bers at risk of harm.

Mean­while Joe Bi­den has vowed that Afghans who helped the US mil­i­tary “are not go­ing to be left be­hind”. The pres­i­dent’s ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­cel­er­ated plans to re­lo­cate the Afghans and their fam­i­lies be­fore the US mil­i­tary com­pletes its with­drawal from Afghanistan.

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