Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are patting themselves on the back for passing a historic increase in visas for Afghans who helped the U.S. war effort. But behind the scenes, House Republicans were fighting to remove the visas from the spending bill altogether.
The White House requested Congress include 20,000 additional visas in its $1.2 trillion spending package in March — a proposal a bipartisan group of senators backed. The increase was ultimately whittled down to 12,000 additional visas, a compromise that still represents the biggest increase the Afghan Allies program has seen since it began in 2009.
Sources close to the negotiating process told NOTUS that House Republican leadership had initially tried to cut the visa increases from the spending package altogether; Speaker Mike Johnson felt there wasn’t enough justification for adding the total 20,000 visas into the budget with six months left in the fiscal year, per a House Republican leadership aide. Some in Republican leadership also argued in favor of winding down the program, saying Americans have been out of Afghanistan for nearly three years, the aide told NOTUS.