Mehran
مهران
(USA)
“I left my future, my loved ones, my hard work, and my country to find a safe place for me and my kids.”
Mehran in Sacramanto, California.
Mehran has several years of experience with national and international organizations and with the previous government of Afghanistan. Before the collapse of Afghanistan, Mehran worked with the Justice Sector Support Program (JSSP) funded by USAID.
Q1: What is a single memory or story you remember from Afghanistan?
I have two questions. The first is about the Afghan allies left behind in Afghanistan and nearby countries, living under difficult conditions: What is the U.S. government doing to help evacuate and resettle them to the United States? My second question has to do with refugees, specifically SIV applicants, that have already moved to the United States: What are the specific supports and services that the U.S. government offers to SIV applicants and SIV holders in the country?
I had heard and seen information that the United States government would assist SIV holders in finding housing, that they would donate everything needed, and train people to find jobs and build careers, that they would help the children enroll in school and help people receive their benefits on time.
Unfortunately, when I came here, I realized they would do nothing for me. I’d heard about agencies assigned to help refugees, however, they did nothing for us. I found a house by myself, and I bought everything for my house with my own money. I borrowed money from friends and other people. The neighbors helped me search for a job and helped my daughter enroll in school. The government did nothing.
To explain in more detail: When I found a house by myself, I was told that they would need to close my case because I had moved out without informing them, from one county to another. According to their policy, this was not allowed, and they forced me to sign a document to close my case. They never helped me with donations, with school enrollment, with finding a job, with borrowing money, with financial resources. Financial resources had been mentioned in a training session on Zoom one day—they explained about a lot of services that they would provide to us, but we ultimately received nothing from them. And after providing no support, they closed my case. I applied for my social security, for my wife’s social security, by myself. I went to the social security office, walking for thirty minutes with my wife, who is eight months pregnant, because I don’t have a car, and I don’t have the money to buy a car—it would take a lot of time to legally buy a car and find a job and find a house.
Now we are facing a lot of challenges, as you can see, in our house. We don’t have a bed, couch, or TV. We don’t have internet to search for jobs or to learn about how to get a driver’s license. We need internet to watch videos for DMV testing. Without a driver’s license, we can’t buy a car. If we buy a car, we can’t drive because we don’t have a license. If we don’t have the means to learn the driving rules, how can we pass the test? This is the one of the challenges we are facing.
To transfer my case—my food benefits and cash aid—I went to the counter here in Sacramento by myself and requested they transfer my case from Turlock to Sacramento County. It will take weeks for the transfer. In the meantime, I am concerned about my wife’s pregnancy. It’s been about two months that we haven’t be able to visit a doctor to check my baby’s health. We can’t go to the doctor because we don’t have an appointment, because our case has not been transferred yet. There’s another challenge that we are facing.
I’ve heard lots of my friends who are SIV holders are facing the same problems. What will the United States government do to overcome these challenges that Afghan allies and SIV holders are experiencing?
As you know, there are also thousands of Afghan allies that are SIV holders who were left behind in Afghanistan. I know lots of them; they are my friends, my coworkers. They are living in Afghanistan in a bad situation. They can’t find jobs or visit the government offices, or go outside to work, because they are scared of the Taliban.
When I was in Afghanistan, one of my friends who had joined the Taliban told me, “You should stay here, we will provide you with a good job, you can work with us.” I asked him, “Can you guarantee my safety and my family’s safety? That the Taliban won’t kill me or my family, that they won’t come for me because I worked with the United States for years? If you can guarantee that, I will stay here. If you can’t, I need to leave the country.”
I decided to leave the country with my pregnant wife and child, to travel from Kabul to Islamabad. But when we arrived in Islamabad, the Pakistani people would not rent their houses to Afghan people. I was searching for a house for days. I walked from Islamabad to Rawalpindi in order to find shelter for my family. Finally, I rented a house with 55,000 rupees—that is too much.
This is not just a problem I’ve experienced. All Afghan allies that left the country are facing such challenges in their second or third countries. We spent all of our savings to obtain visas, airplane tickets, pay rent. When we arrived in the United States, we did not have any money leftover because we had spent everything. And any money we left in Afghanistan was in banks that are now closed, and from which we can’t withdraw.
So when we come here without money, how can we manage our lives—the first steps, the first two or three or five months—if the U.S. government does not support us? How can we manage our lives? How can we pay our rent? Meet our needs? If we borrow money to resolve our challenges, we are immediately in debt. It means we have to start our new life with depression, with debt, with no money. Under such circumstances, it’s difficult to expect us to have a brilliant life in the United States and a good future. If the government supported us, not just us parents but also our children would have a good future. They would begin their lives with hope and goals and ambitions, and they would be able to support themselves and give back to the government.
Q2: Tell us the exact moment you decided to leave Afghanistan.
I left behind my mother, my father, my sister and brother, my friends in Afghanistan. They are searching for shelter, for somewhere to hide from the Taliban. They need food and shelter. My job is not only to support my family here; I also need to send money to my mother and father in Afghanistan.
My father, mother, sister, and brother left the country and went to Pakistan, but are facing lots of challenges. There are nine of them there, and they don’t have jobs or stable housing; they have to pay a lot of money for shelter and essential foods, bread and tea, nothing more. In light of this situation, I need to start working as soon as possible, to earn money for both my family here and those left behind in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Q3: What is something important that you wanted to bring with you? Or what is something you wanted to bring but could not?
The hardest moment in my life was when my mother, father, brother, and sister left us in Kabul. I told them that my wife, child, and I would be evacuated by the United States in August, as soon as possible. They left Kabul for Quetta, Pakistan, crossing the border without visa or passports, to escape the war and the Taliban.
I stayed in Kabul because I expected that the United States government would evacuate us in August, which is what our project and manager were promised. But unfortunately, they did not evacuate us; we were left behind. For months, we were suffering with lots of challenges, in danger of the Taliban. Our landlord joined the Taliban, so we immediately left the house and went to Aria in Kabul, and lived in a small room, one room and a kitchen. We lived there for four months with the Taliban in control of Kabul. Finally, we decided to leave the country and bought visas and tickets for lots of money. We left for Islamabad.
I miss my country, the place of my birth. All my nightmares, my hopes, my friends, my future were there. I left all of that behind.
I have more than ten years of work experience, a master’s degree, and I wish that I could help my people and my country grow, to build a good future for my child, but I can’t, unfortunately I can’t.
Q4: If you could send a message that will be heard in thirty years, what would it be?
I have a daughter who is six years old. After we left the country, when we were in Pakistan, we would go the park and my daughter would always say, “Dad, I don’t want to live here because the kids around here don’t speak Persian. I want to go back to Afghanistan, to Kabul, to my friends Zahra and Mahnaz and Zainab. I miss them.”
When we left Islamabad and went to Qatar, I called my mom to say goodbye. She asked, “My son, will it be possible to see you again?” But I had nothing to stay because I couldn’t know the answer. Living in America is not so easy. I don’t know if I can earn enough money to go back to Afghanistan or any other country where my mother might end up living. I don’t know if my mom is alive or not. And this is not just my situation; my people are all living with this uncertainty.
The Taliban are not our people, they come from elsewhere, we don’t know them. But I am happy that my wife and my child—and our baby that will be born here—will have a safe future in the United States. This is good news. But I am thinking about all the children in Afghanistan, who should also have the right to live.
I’m not an uneducated person like the Taliban. I am an educated person. I feel compassion for other humans. I believe in human rights. My child and my friend’s child and my people’s children should all have the same rights. I can’t be happy with only getting my family out. This cannot be the whole story.
You know, there is a Brazilian saying, “God is big, but the forest is bigger. When I arrived here, I saw that God is big, but America is bigger. If they wanted to, they could help our people, our country. California alone is like a big country. The United States has fifty-one states but they are more like fifty-one countries, fifty-one powers.
My wife had been working for seven years as a nurse in a police hospital in Afghanistan. She cared for lots of soldiers—to save our country, to fight against terrorists—for seven years. She had lots of hope in Afghanistan, but now she is here. She had to leave her friends, her mother and father, her loved ones in Afghanistan. Her career.
You know, you asked me to explain our goals and vision for the future in the United States, but we lost everything. There are agencies that are assigned to support refugees to adjust to the U.S. But unfortunately, the masters and doctors that come to the United States are forced to start at zero. Why? Because the United States doesn’t have a specific support program for them. My wife and I—I have a master’s degree in accounting and finance, with more than ten years’ experience, serious professional experience with United States organizations, NGOs that worked in Afghanistan. And my wife had a career in nursing—she is an educated person.
But here we have to start from zero. We lost everything here. Our careers. Our education. We start here with DoorDash, with Lyft. I can’t work as a finance advisor, as I was in Afghanistan. This is the reality of the United States for us, for refugees.
But we have hope for our children, if not for ourselves. We will give up everything for our children; that is enough for us. No problem. We will start with DoorDash, with driving for Lyft and Uber. It’s enough to know that our child will have a safe future.
My pain is not about myself. I am strong—I am really strong. I can manage everything. I believe in myself. But I feel pain for my people. For my two sisters, who were left in Afghanistan. They are educated. They have been working. They had their own goals and ambitions, to work, to be independent. But unfortunately, everything was lost for them as well.
You know what the difference is between me and my two sisters who have been left behind in Afghanistan? From now on, they have nothing. Their future is broken.
My brother is an engineer and had been working or more than ten years with the United States government in Afghanistan, to launch different projects with the militaries in different provinces. He was an SIV holder. He applied and got COM [Chief of Mission] approval in 2016. He continued working in Afghanistan and decided to stay there because he had hopes, not just for himself, but for his children, his country, and his people. He stayed there—and chose not to come to the United States—to work for his people and country.
But unfortunately, he’s since experienced problems. His case was canceled, and his SIV petition process ended. But he has the right to an SIV. He applied again. He will probably wait for a long time. It is too bad that the bureaucracy in the United States has created such problems for SIV holders.
I applied for SIV in 2019 and got my COM approval in December 2020. But I was able to leave, I spent lots of time to provide the documentation that they asked for. Really, the government should judge SIV applicants right when they begin working with the United States in Afghanistan. When I started work at the GIZ, they had lots of requirements: RSO, security checks, background checks, and not just for my immediate family, for my father and mother, and my wife’s mother and father, and their siblings, my siblings. I think this process should be enough for SIV, to get issued a visa. But to process an SIV—just for COM approval it takes two or three years. And then, after COM approval, we need to wait for two or three more years of processing. This is not SIV; this is a life of waiting for our future. The United States should revise this procedure.
You know, more than eighty-five thousand Afghan allies with their families, SIV holders, were left in Afghanistan, in a bad situation. Every day, there are killings by the Taliban, but you don’t hear about them because you can only know what the media tells you. You don’t see what’s going on in the streets, in private houses, in provinces, in villages—in the dark streets of Kabul. That Afghan allies who worked with the United States are killed every day. You don’t have documentation of that.
“While there is life, there is hope. One should never lose hope. For us, hope is everything.”