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Source: Human Rights Watch

Visa Plan Helpful But Lacks Path to Asylum

(Beirut) - The Iranian governments December 13, 2014 announcement that it will grant a six-month visa extension to 450,000 Afghans is a helpful move to prevent their imminent deportation, Human Rights Watch said today. However, the visa-extension plan is no substitute for an asylum system that will allow newly arriving Afghans to lodge refugee claims.

An Iranian foreign ministry official described the visa extension plan as a reflection of Irans brotherly relations with Afghanistan. The official said that the Afghan government had agreed to devise an assistance plan for reintegrating the 450,000 Afghans when they return to Afghanistan. Under the Iranian plan, the previously undocumented Afghans will be able to apply for temporary visas and work.

The Iranian government deserves credit for sparing almost half-a-million Afghans the threat of imminent deportation, said Patricia Gossman, senior Afghanistan researcher. But the visa extension wont remedy a broken asylum system that routinely results in the detention and deportation of unregistered Afghans without access to refugee status, due process, or an opportunity for legal appeal of their forced removal.

Afghanistans second deputy chief executive, Mohammad Mohaqiq, confirmed some of the details of the visa extension plan to reporters on December 14. Mohaqiq said the Iranian government had also committed to allow undocumented Afghan children to study in Iranian schools, and to cut in half university fees for Afghan students.

Iranian authorities have previously extended the visas of several hundred thousand Afghans who have temporary residence status in Iran. From 2010 to June 2012, the Iranian government operated a Comprehensive Regularization Plan (CRP), which offered undocumented Afghans in Iran an opportunity to register officially and apply for temporary visas and work permits with the possibility, but not the guarantee, that they would be extended.

The process required Afghan men without families to return to Afghanistan to apply for visas, while families could apply without leaving Iran. The process was difficult and costly for indigent migrants, in part because it required all applicants first to obtain Afghan passports. The Iranian authorities have also encouraged Afghans who have legal status as refugees to exchange refugee status for Iranian residential visas.

For the last three decades, Iran has hosted one of the largest refugee populations in the world, according to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. But at present, only 840,000 of the approximately 3 million Afghans estimated to live in Iran have legal status as refugees. The Iranian government has excluded the remainder from accessing asylum procedures, including the Afghans whose temporary legal status has now been extended by the Iranian government, as well as the many others who have temporary visas or are undocumented.

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Iran: Let Afghans Seek Refugee Status