President Trump’s most recent travel ban has been temporarily halted - after a federal judge in Hawaii issued a nationwide temporary restraining order Wednesday night.
Those with Special Immigrant Visas - like a family of four that arrived in Delaware late Monday night - were exempt from Trump’s second try at a refugee travel ban.
But as Delaware Public Media’s Megan Pauly tells us, the U.S. Government is running out of those visas.
The Special Immigrant Visas are reserved for Afghan and Iraqi nationals employed by the U.S. government.
But there aren’t enough of those Special Immigrant Visas to go around.
More than 15,000 Afghan nationals are in the pipeline to receive one of the visas.
For the past three combined fiscal years – Congress had allocated a total of 8,500 of the special visas.
Now – according to a State Department spokesman – there are less than 1,500 of them remaining under that cap.
The State Department has stopped scheduling new visa interviews in anticipation that all remaining visas will be exhausted by June 1st.
After June 1st, Congress will have to come up with a new allocation.
