Afghans in our midst

That the Afghan question now staring the Philippine government in the face has generated a chorus of bleeding hearts demanding yet another display of our vaunted hospitality and sense of community only shows how greatly misunderstood the issue is. And blame for that lies squarely on the secrecy with which the plan was pursued to let the Afghans in.

 As a backgrounder, there is a secret plan (secret because it was never publicly disclosed until the media got wind of it and prompted the Senate to investigate) to temporarily allow hordes of Afghans (1,000 to 1,500 per batch) to stay in the country to be "processed" for eventual entry into the United States.

These Afghans, it was made clear at the first Senate hearing, are not refugees but former employees of the United States during the 20 years that it waged its longest ever foreign war until it hastily left in defeat a couple of years ago to virtually hand over control of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Technicalities aside, they are nevertheless refugees.

And here is where the bleeding hearts are wrong. They are not refugees intending to stay in the Philippines. The Philippines is not their intended country of refuge. In all likelihood, they would want nothing to do with the Philippines if given the choice. They are not in need of the vaunted hospitality and sense of community the bleeding hearts invoke.

These Afghans are on their way to America, on whose side they fought during the war that ravaged their country. But for some strange reason it is not telling, America does not want its Afghan friends to wait outside the door to its home. It wants them to wait as far away as possible, at the home of yet another "friend" who, not by accident, happens to be us.

It is not our vaunted hospitality and sense of community that the bleeding hearts think is at issue here. It is America's. We are just being used, if we allow it, as a holding area, a halfway house, a disinfecting room before these Afghans who worked for America during the war in their own country can eventually be permitted to step into the USA.

A very good and dear friend of mine wrote to remind me of how graciously we have opened our arms, our hearts and our country in the past to White Russian, Jewish, and Vietnamese refugees and I fully concur with his point. I swell with pride at the thought. Indeed those were among the finest moments of the Filipino.

But those were very different moments, played out under very different circumstances and thus necessitated very different responses. The Afghans will not be coming to the Philippines as a matter of choice. That they are headed here is a matter of American choice. The Afghans could not care less where they land in the interim.

What matters to the Afghans is that they make America in the end. It is America that is their choice, as if they even have a choice after having sided with that country in their civil war. That said, the question now begs to be asked: What happens to those, for one reason or another, get to be refused entry to the US? Whose cargo will they eventually be?

Take note that a very plausible reason for rejection can be issues about security and terrorism. Those are issues the Philippines needs like a hole in the head. If I may venture an uneducated guess, it is precisely for such issues the US wants processing the Afghans as far away from home as possible. And guess who it thinks is the most ready and willing sucker?