Majority in US favors refugee status for Afghans who worked with Americans: poll

The overwhelming majority of Americans support providing refugee status to Afghan people who helped the U.S. during its two-decade war in Afghanistan. 

A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that 72 percent of respondents support providing refugee status to “people who worked with the U.S. or Afghan government during the war.” This approval was specifically for people who were evacuated as refugees and passed security checks. 

The survey’s findings also showed bipartisan agreement on the issue, with 76 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans in favor of providing refugee status.

For some resettlement groups, the poll’s results reflect what they have seen in their communities as people have welcomed refugees who were forced to flee their home country after the Taliban’s takeover, according to The Associated Press. 

“I don’t think there’s any more unified issue that the American public has had since 9/11,” Matt Zeller, an Afghanistan war veteran and founder of a veteran’s group called No One Left Behind, said to the AP.

“We owe it to them,” 62-year-old Andrew Davis, a Republican and Army veteran, told the AP. “It’d be dangerous for them to stay there, I think, if they helped us.”

Despite this unity, the same poll also showed some divisions about the removal of troops from Afghanistan at the end of August. Overall, 45 percent of people polled approved of the decision and 39 percent disapproved. In terms of party divisions, 65 percent of those who approved were Democrats, and 24 percent were Republicans. 

The AP-NORC poll was conducted from Sept. 23-27 and included 1,099 adults. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.