The Philippines has agreed to a request by the US to temporarily host a US immigrant visa processing center for a limited number of Afghan nationals aspiring to resettle in the US, the treaty allies announced yesterday.
The Philippine government’s approval of the request, which initially faced local concerns over potential security and legal issues, reflects how relations between Manila and Washington have deepened under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who took office in 2022.
The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said the agreement was undergoing final domestic procedures before it takes effect. It did not provide other details, including how many Afghans would be allowed to temporarily stay in the Philippines at any time while their special immigrant visas for resettlement to the US are being completed.
Photo: AFP
“The US government is supporting necessary services for those Afghans temporarily in the Philippines, including food, housing, security, medical and transportation to complete visa processing,” the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The US thanked the Philippines in a statement by the US Department of State “for supporting Afghan allies of the United States” and added that it “appreciates its long and positive history of bilateral cooperation with the Philippines.”
The Afghan nationals to be considered for resettlement primarily worked for the US government in Afghanistan or were deemed eligible for US special immigrant visas, but were left behind when Washington withdrew from the country as Taliban militants took back power in a chaotic period in 2021.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken first relayed the request to his Philippine counterpart in 2022, and US President Joe Biden discussed the request when Marcos visited the US last year, Philippine officials said.
Marcos last year said that he was told by US officials that a maximum of 1,000 Afghan nationals would be allowed to stay in the Philippines at any one time while their special immigrant visas are being processed.
He said at the time there were difficult legal and logistical issues to address for the program to run as hoped.
Some Filipino officials have expressed fears the Afghan nationals could become targets of attacks while in the Philippines. Others raised legal questions about an arrangement where US authorities would have a say in vetting who could enter the Philippines.
One prospective problem is what to do with Afghan nationals whose US special visa immigrant application is indefinitely stalled or rejected, Marcos said, and expressed concern that thousands of Afghan nationals could be stranded in the country while awaiting relocation to the US.
Marcos has rekindled relations with the US since winning the presidency with a landslide margin two years ago.
In February last year, he allowed an expansion of the US military presence under a 2014 defense agreement in a decision that China warned would allow US forces to gain a staging ground to intervene in the South China Sea and Taiwan issues.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS