On The First, Newsmax’s Steve Cortes says US promise to give Afghan contractors immigrant visas was “a mistake”
Steve Cortes: “We don’t have a moral obligation to bring them to the United States just because they work on our behalf”
Published
Citation From the August 25, 2021, edition of The First's Hold the Line
BUCK SEXTON (HOST): On SIV [Special Immigrant Visas] specifically, why shouldn’t the U.S. government make good on its promise? I mean, isn’t the word of Uncle Sam supposed to mean something?
STEVE CORTES (NEWSMAX HOST): Well the promise was never that you could become an American citizen. That was never promised, that you get resettlement —
SEXTON: It was green cards. It's green cards.
CORTES: That you get resettlement — no, no, no, I’m saying — hold on, back it up before — I’m saying the SIV was a mistake. I’m saying that the promise — when we hired people to be interpreters, we never made a promise that, by the way, if things get rough, you get to come to the United States, and we will pay for you to come to the United States and become either a permanent resident or a citizen. That was never a deal. I certainly didn't make that deal. I don't think any American made that deal.
[CROSSTALK]
SEXTON: What do you think the promise — what do you think the promise was, Steve? And what do you think the SIV program is supposed to do?
CORTES: No, no. Again, I’m not arguing with you on the SIV part of it. I’m saying that was a mistake, the SIV program.
SEXTON: OK.
CORTES: I think we have a moral obligation to help people. We don’t have a moral obligation to bring them to the United States just because they work on our behalf.
And by the way, I would also say this: Even if we made that promise, we know from our experience in Afghanistan that among people who were completely — in our estimation — were completely vetted, people who were literally fighting alongside Americans, people of Afghan forces, Afghan police, people who were contractors for the American military — we still know that green-on-blue crime, insider attacks where they would literally turn their guns on Americans and even more so on their fellow Afghani citizens and their fellow Afghani fighters. This has been a systemic problem there for many, many years, and including in recent years.