The Afghan SIV Program Proposed Wind-down Plan

There was a plan to finish the job.

Before the current administration took office, the U.S. government developed a formal, congressionally mandated plan to responsibly wind down the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program.

It was not a shutdown plan.
It was a plan to complete the process for our Afghan allies.

👉 Read the original report to Congress

What the Plan Did

The plan was straightforward:

• Keep processing applications until cases were resolved

• Continue relocation operations so applicants could reach interviews

• Issue visas as long as Congress provided them

• Work through the pipeline over time, not all at once

• Complete ~99% of cases by around 2029

This was a structured, lawful wind-down, directed by Congress.

What It Required

To succeed, the plan depended on:

• Continued operations under Enduring Welcome and CARE

• Additional visas from Congress

• Stable policies and timelines

• Coordination across agencies

In other words: keep the system running long enough to finish it.

What Has Changed

That is not what is happening now.

Current actions are:

• Halting or restricting relocation pathways

• Slowing or stopping processing

• Undermining the systems needed to complete cases

These steps do not wind down the program.
They interrupt it before it is finished.

Why It Matters

This is about more than process.

• Congress directed a plan to complete the program

• The U.S. made commitments to wartime allies

• Courts have reinforced those obligations

The plan showed how to do this responsibly.

The Bottom Line

We had a path to finish the job.

That path is now being disrupted.

The question is simple:
Will the United States follow the plan it created, or walk away from it?

Want to Go Deeper?

• Read the full wind-down plan

• Learn how the SIV program works on our SIV Current State