A couple of months ago, I posted about the case of the man at left, Janis Shinawri, who was the interpreter for the man at the right, Matt Zeller, in Afghanistan. After a huge effort by Zeller, which involved the woman at the right, Louise Slaughter (D-NY-25), who’s the ranking member of the House Rules committee, as well as many others, Shinawri is finally in the US where he belongs. Interpreters like him, as well as their families, are prime Taliban targets.
Zeller took on the thankless task of being the Democratic nominee for the NY-29 seat after Eric Massa resigned in disgrace. He lost that fight – good to see him win this one.
WereBear
This is extraordinary good news!
MomSense
Woot Woot!
WaterGIrl
Such great news! What we are doing to those interpreters is just so wrong. It’s like we use them and throw them away. So happy to see Matt Zeller fight so hard for the man who helped him, but beyond happy seeing the interpreter finally on american soil.
raven
@WaterGIrl: Just like the GI’s.
geg6
I saw a report on some news show about this the other day and remembered reading about him here, dpm. Was really happy to see this happen. Now if we could only save all the rest of them.
WaterGIrl
@raven: Sadly, yes.
boatboy_srq
@WaterGIrl: See the comments on the Anne Laurie’s Walmart post yesterday. Scr3wing the 99% – civilian and military, citizen or foreign national – is SOP. Interpreters fall into those categories. Helping Ahmurrca simply because of its Free Capitalist Wonderfulness™ has never happened once in the history of the New World, and the risks the interpreters have taken has been immeasurable with precious little thanks from the people they helped.
At least we’re getting some of them out to (comparative) safety – but I’m waiting for some Teahadist genius to go off on Shinawri for being Just Another Raghead.
Cervantes
Thanks for sharing good news. Always nice to see positive things happen to decent people.
Athenae
Louise Slaughter is such a water-walking badass. I saw her speak once and it was amazing.
A.
mai naem
This American Life had a piece on an Iraqi man who ended up being killed. The American who was trying to help the guy read the various emails from between the two of them and American agencies. It was a Sisyphus like ordeal. The interpreter was writing in the emails that “I am scared, I have had threats, I am going to die!” and the agency person writes back “You need x form from person a and y form from person b.” But, hey, hey, hey Dick Cheney still gets his platinum plated healthcare and George W. Bush still paints shower selfies and goes on Jay Leno, so the world is all okay.
handsmile
@Athenae:
Another loud shout-out for Rep. Louise Slaughter, one of the progressive leaders of Congress for years.
Here’s another recent example of her activism: joining with Common Cause and Alliance for Justice in charging Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals court judge Diane Sykes with violating judicial ethics by agreeing to headline the annual fundraising dinner for the Federalist Society:
http://www.louise.house.gov/press-releases/reformers-senior-lawmaker-charge-justice-thomas-and-federal-appellate-judge-diane-sykes-with-violating-judicial-ethics/
A fighter even when the odds are long, even quixotic.
In 1994 (my, that’s getting to be a long time ago), Congresswoman Slaughter agreed to serve as one of the keynote speakers for a conference I organized on the future of the National Endowment for the Arts. A pleasure to work with her then; even more of one to follow her example and her career.
Elizabelle
OT: Villager gossip porn, maybe some good news for someone.
Look out teh single ladies: coming soon to an Applebee’s Happy Hour near you:
From WaPost:
Why the need for “the respected”?
? Martin
@Elizabelle:
Because it would never dawn on the reader unless we were told.
piratedan
@Elizabelle: adjective expiration factor, use ’em or lose ’em….
Cervantes
@Elizabelle: “I go to colleges and I tell kids if you have a great career and a crappy marriage, you will be miserable. If you have a crappy career and a great marriage, you’ll be happy. So every course you take in college should be about who to marry.”
Flawless thinking, David, as always.
Cervantes
@Elizabelle: Why the need for “the respected”?
An attempt to distinguish him from Douthat and Dowd?
Elizabelle
@Cervantes:
It’s why he makes the big bucks. And is thus “respected.”
Oh, and humility.
Gene108
@mai naem:
The Obama Admin sucks salted donkey balls on immigration. They are awful and have turned an already slow and difficult system into something closer to a new method of emotional torture.
JPL
@Elizabelle: How soon will it be before someone on the comments blames ObamaCare?
MikeJ
@JPL: Obama promised we could keep our spouses!
feebog
@Gene108:
Because, as we know, Obama controls all the branches of Government. He has the Speaker of the House in his back pocket.
piratedan
@MikeJ: yeah, but I doubt that Brooks met the new minimum spouse requirements as mandated by our new gay marriage enforced regulations, just like the evangelicals warned us…
Tokyokie
I guided the foreign-born spousal unit through the immigration process, so I have an idea of what a bureaucratic quagmire it is. But a member of Congress’ help is required to get an interpreter for U.S. personnel in Iraq to safety? State and DoD could cut through the red tape they put in place in a heartbeat if they had the will to do so, but apparently they don’t. And although I’m happy for Shinawri, my guess is that dozens more who don’t have Keller and Slaughter arguing their cases have been left to die.
handsmile
@Elizabelle:
Why the need for “the respected”?
Maybe Jeff Bezos is trying to woo him. Poaching Brooks from the NYT would signal just how “Very Serious” the Post’s new owner is about reinvigorating “Amazon Prime Daily.” And adding yet another neo-conservative to that paper’s editorial page roster would be praised as just that.
Also, lovely knife-work there with the “Applebee’s” reference (though I believe it’s the salad bar where the ladies should look for Mr. Brooks.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle:
Here’s hoping that Sarah takes him to the cleaners.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tokyokie:
I’m happy for him as well, but the US tradition of winning hearts and minds continues when we leave those who assisted us in our little adventures to gruesome fates in their native lands.
JPL
OT.. I didn’t see Richard’s name on the author list or else I would send him this article from the Guardian. ALEC is drawing up bills to further defund the health care law. Hate is not a strong enough word for my feelings right now.
Raven
Obama, “Oprah was told she should change her name to Susie. . . I was given the same advice.
Elizabelle
@handsmile:
Oh, that’s a horrible idea. Bobo to the WaPost.
Although their columnists, on balance, can’t get any worse.
Could he be the Richard Cohen replacement?
JPL
@Raven: funny. I forgot to watch the ceremony but the list of the Medal of Freedom honorees is quite interesting, from Dean Smith to Bill Clinton. Maybe now that the ceremony is over, the right will lose their fascination with Oprah.
Raven
Ernie Banks with the Medal of Freedom!!!!
Raven
@JPL: Let’s play two!
Violet
Such good news. Thanks for posting it.
@Elizabelle:
Ha! Wonder if he’s got a dead girl/live boy story hiding away somewhere, or if it’s just run-of-the-mill live girl. Maybe he tweeted pics of his p3n1s? Should we start calling him Enrique Peril?
Chris
@Tokyokie:
I suspects the reason the bureaucracies keep the red tape going is that all of them are thinking about the infinitesimal chance that one of the interpreters they let in will, in fact, turn out to be a terrorist (you just can’t ever tell with these people, ya know?) And they know that if that does in fact happen, no one will care about the hundreds of people marked for death who were saved, they’ll only care about the one mole. So they cover their asses by absolutely burying the applicants in red tape, making sure every I is dotted, every T crossed, and the fonts and margins exactly what they ought to be. That way if one of them ever does turn out to be a terrorist, they can point to the application process and go “what? I did everything I possibly could. It’s not my fault.”
handsmile
@Elizabelle:
At 72, the enfeebled Mr. Cohen may choose to retire in the near future, but Bezos would absolutely refuse to countenance any suggestion that his departure was prompted by protests from hippies. So Cohen’s “conventional” views will continue to dribble out there for the time being.
But yes, I do think a bidding war could break out between Mr. Amazon and the Sulzberger family for the wit and wisdom of Bobo. Bezos would love such a trophy, particularly one vetted by the “liberal” PBS/NPR. And it would be in Brooks’ interest to be so courted. As VDE alludes above (#25), his financial obligations may soon become more pressing.
Yatsuno
@Violet: Hey if both George Will and Richard Cohen can go around fucking whoever they want, why not BoBo?
Tokyokie
@Chris: Oh, I’m sure that’s the case. But State could streamline the process for applicants whom DoD had already identified as having worked for the military, and neither is doing it. But then, State and DoD often don’t play well together. And as a result of bureaucratic turf wars, lots of people will needlessly die. (And sure, had Bush not lied our military into Iraq, hundreds of thousands wouldn’t have needlessly died. But we can still do something about the interpreters, but apparently we aren’t.)
Ash Can
@Elizabelle:
“Respected” by whom?
Yeah, because everyone in the entire fucking world is exactly like you, Brooks, you vapid moron. Cripes, he stumbles upon some tidbit of pop psychology and thinks it’s a burning-bush divine revelation just for him. That would be fine if he were just another overprivileged suburban dweeb whose shallow pronouncements never went any further than the neighborhood backyard barbecues, kids’ play dates, and PTA fundraisers. But no, we have to be afflicted by way too fucking many people in mass communications who inexplicably feel a need to give this nebbish a soapbox and pay him for his drivel. Seriously, WTF?
Hey, NYT et al.: I take a dump every morning. Why aren’t you paying me for that too?
Ash Can
@Raven:
WOO-HOO!! That’s wonderful!
Chris
@Tokyokie:
Sure, but I’m saying there’s no incentive to streamline the process. In fact, throwing all these obstacles in their way is a probably seen as a good thing, since the less people are let in, the less people they have to worry about being terrorists. As for your argument that the process should be streamlined for people who’ve already been working with the military – all anyone needs to say to that is “NIDAL MALIK HASAN!” (If one of “our” Muslims can do that, how much more dangerous must “their” Muslims be, hmm?)
According to the veterans I’ve talked to, this is also why, twelve fucking years after 9/11, the military, CIA and State Department are still clamoring that they don’t have enough regional/cultural experts. Most of the people who do have firsthand regional/cultural knowledge (e.g. first or second generation immigrants or even foreigners who worked for Uncle Sam like these interpreters) are considered security risks, so you’re not allowed to do anything with them.
Mnemosyne
@Ash Can:
Heh. My now-husband and I not only went to the same college, we were in the same school (Cinema-Television) with different emphases. When I was looking at my transcripts while applying to graduate school, we realized that we had had at least one class together (a massive lecture class) and had been in the same graduation ceremony.
And yet we met 7 years after graduation through an ad on the internet. Life is weird.
Elizabelle
@Violet:
Maybe they couldn’t find each other anymore in that $4 million house.
daverave
I couldn’t help but immediately notice the iconic photo on the wall in the above picture of the Afghan girl with those eyes that had seen so much pain and suffering in her country. And that was back in the days of the Russian occupation. Not much changes there, that’s for sure.
Tokyokie
@Chris: Again, I don’t disagree with you. I guess my argument is that higher levels of State and DoD could create such incentives, but they’re choosing not to. And until the top levels of those agencies choose to work together, they won’t. And my guess is that it’s a lot easier for a foreign national who’s working for us to turn against us in his home country where he can easily find a well developed support network and has easier access to explosives than he would in the U.S., but then ethnic prejudice isn’t my default setting.
Also, don’t forget that we got rid of a slew of language experts a few years back because they were gay. Guess we showed them. Or showed somebody.
ericblair
@Chris:
The Director of National Intelligence changed the SCI adjudication rules a couple of years ago to make it easier for people with foreign relatives and relationships to get intelligence clearances. However, whether the individual agencies give a shit what the DNI thinks is a different matter, so as far as I know it’s still a problem. Now that they’re going to (maybe) reform the regulations after the whole Snowden shitshow, I don’t think they’re in the mood to loosen anything anywhere, but don’t know for sure.
Mart
@daverave: Yeah, that caught my eye too. They must have staged the photo under that picture. Think it was National Geographic that published it. The Mona Lisa of Afghanistan. 30 years of mostly being occupied. No wonder they hate us for our freedom.
Gene108
@feebog:
Obama is in charge of the Executive branch. If folks in USCIS are issuing directives to make immigration harder that is because someone somewhere in the executive branch is OK with it and that is something under Obama’s control.
He may have other issues on his mind but immigration has become a lot harder under Obama than it was under Bush or Clinton and a lot of it has to do with unilateral decisions by USCIS.
schrodinger's cat
@Gene108: Are you referring to the loving treatment that Infosys and the other Indian body shops are getting? Some of it is very well deserved.
daverave
@Mart:
Yep, that was a Nat Geo cover photo from 1985. Any photographer on the planet would immediately hone in on that for a background.
They did a 2002 follow-up photo/story here, well worth the read in today’s context:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text
“Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes.”
And that was before another 11 years of war-torn occupation. Freedom indeed.
Trollhattan
Why is John Oliver meeting with these people?
Jebediah, RBG
@raven:
That’s something that has stuck in my fucking craw for about ever. I’ve never served but it has always been my position that if we are going to send anybody off to get shot at, then we fucking well owe them full care when they come back. No excuses, no bullshit. Too expensive? Raise some fucking taxes, and maybe don’t send them off to get shot at unless it is really, truly necessary.
Suffern ACE
@Gene108: Why when we have been in a recession and then this lumpy-dumpy recovery, would we make immigration easier?
Yatsuno
Good news? Good news! It’s Uncle Joe’s birfday!!!
gwangung
Given the slowness of Senate Republicans to approve upper level employees, and given the packing of departments by the previous administration, I wonder how much of this is being dictated by people left over from the Bush Administration.
@Gene108: See above.
gene108
@Suffern ACE:
My issue with the state of immigration right now is the seeming arbitrary way things get adjudicated. It’s one thing to set the bar at a level and say you need to do these things to get a visa, but the bar keeps moving or in other words for one person, it is 20 feet high and can’t by humanly jumped over but the guy next to him it’s 3 feet high and can be cleared.
gene108
@gwangung:
I would just like to point out that the people, who process visa papers are USCIS, which sits under DHS. The State Department gets the final stay on actually stamping a visa in someone’s passport, but they do not do the actual handling of the paperwork to get a visa.
Then CBP (Custom’s and Border Patrol) get to decide, if the person is worthy of clearing customs and being admitted into the country from the port of entry.
So if the USCIS officer decides the papers are all good, then a state department official at the consulate can decide to reject the visa applicant at the time he/she goes to get the visa stamped in his/her passport. If the state department official grants the visa stamping at the consulate, someone from CBP can decide to turn a person away at the port of entry.
These are the touch points, where things can go wrong for normal visa applicants.
I’m guessing the interpreters have another set of complications for USCIS.
After five years on the job, the Obama Administration owns decisions made on immigration. From what I’ve heard from immigration attorneys is that Obama set out to prove that immigration can be hard-ass and keep people from entering illegally, in order to get a grand bargain on immigration reform through doubters (i.e. Republicans) so all the illegals can be made legal and we don’t have to revisit the issue of amnesty again.
In the process of getting this grand bargain, immigration has gone from bad to worse for legal immigrants.
Jebediah, RBG
@Yatsuno:
Fantastic! I didn’t even know I had an Uncle Joe!
Mnemosyne
@Jebediah, RBG:
He’s everyone’s Uncle Joe.
Jebediah, RBG
@Mnemosyne:
Now I remember. we bought a bunch of those Cutco knives from him one year.