Live Updates: House Takes Steps to Smooth Visa Process for Afghans

Rushing to help Afghans who face retribution for working alongside American troops in their home country, the House is scheduled to vote on Tuesday to speed up the process that would allow them to immigrate to the United States.

With the American military in the final phases of withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, more than 18,000 Afghans who have worked as interpreters, drivers, engineers, security guards and embassy clerks for the United States are stuck in a bureaucratic morass after applying for Special Immigrant Visas, available to people who face threats because of work for the U.S. government.

The measure slated for a vote on Tuesday — the first in a package of bills that would smooth the visa process — would waive a requirement for applicants to undergo medical examinations in Afghanistan before qualifying. It aims to shorten the long wait for permission to enter the United States, which can be as long as six or seven years for some applicants.

Some of the “Afghan allies” awaiting visas have spoken out about the threats they face from the Taliban.

“This is a moral imperative for our nation,” said Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado, a former Army Ranger who is the lead sponsor of the bill. “We have to honor our promises to our partners. We’re going to debate Afghanistan for decades to come and what lessons we learned, but we do know we can do things with honor for the next few weeks.”

The measure is one of several being pushed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, many of them military members or veterans who have worked with translators, drivers and fixers in Afghanistan and other combat zones.

The group has also pressured the Biden administration to carry out a mass evacuation of Afghans who are awaiting their visas, an idea that President Biden embraced last week, saying, “Those who helped us are not going to be left behind.”

But first, the Afghans must qualify for visas. Only one clinic in the country — a German facility in Kabul — does the medical examinations, requiring some people to travel long distances through dangerous conditions. And the exams are expensive, Mr. Crow said.

A separate bill introduced by the group would expand the universe of eligible Afghans by removing what its proponents call “burdensome” application requirements, including a “credible sworn statement” of a specific threat and proof of a “sensitive and trusted” job. Instead, it would in effect stipulate that any Afghan who helped the U.S. government by definition faced retribution and should be able to apply for a visa. The bill would also increase the number of visas available.

Since 2014, the nonprofit organization No One Left Behind has tracked the killings of more than 300 translators or their family members, many of whom died while waiting for their visas to be processed, according to James Miervaldis, the group’s chairman and an Army Reserve noncommissioned officer.

Biden administration officials have said they plan to relocate the Afghan allies outside Afghanistan, possibly to Guam, to await the processing of their visa requests.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to create a House select committee to investigate the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, introducing a measure laying out a proposed 13-member panel while an aide suggested she might include a Republican among her appointees.

With a vote on the committee’s creation expected this week, the resolution laid out the parameters for a broad inquiry into “the facts, circumstances and causes relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack” by a pro-Trump mob. The panel would have full subpoena power and a mandate to look deep into the web of disinformation and partisan animus that fueled the attack, as well as institutional failures that hampered the law enforcement response.

“Jan. 6 was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history,” Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, said in a statement. “It is imperative that we establish the truth of that day and ensure such an attack cannot again happen.”

The speaker said she was proceeding reluctantly after Senate Republicans blocked the creation of an independent commission that would have moved an investigation of the attack outside the politically charged halls of Congress. After months of pushing for such a body, Ms. Pelosi said there was “no prospect for additional votes from Republican senators,” whom she accused of putting their party’s interests above the country’s.

Ms. Pelosi and her leadership team expect the select committee measure to pass this week with almost all Democratic votes. Only 35 House Republicans voted to create a bipartisan independent commission, which their leaders portrayed as a partisan attack on Mr. Trump meant to kneecap the party in the 2022 elections. Even fewer are expected to embrace a panel with a Democratic majority.

Representative John Katko of New York, an outspoken Republican supporter of an independent commission, embodied the shift. On Monday, he said he would not only vote against the select committee but also probably refuse to serve on it if asked.

“It would be a turbocharged partisan exercise, not an honest fact-finding body that the American people and Capitol Police deserve,” Mr. Katko said in a statement.

Under Ms. Pelosi’s proposal, Democrats would fill eight of the panel’s seats with appointees of their choice and select an additional five “after consultation with the minority leader,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California. Mr. McCarthy has not said whether he will recommend members, though last week, he told police officers injured in the attack that he would take the appointment process seriously.

Ms. Pelosi would also name the committee’s chairman. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the head of the Homeland Security Committee, is considered a leading contender.

Ms. Pelosi appeared to be making preparations in case Mr. McCarthy recommended the appointment of lawmakers who had tried to downplay or deny the attack, which sent the vice president and members of Congress fleeing for their lives, left several people dead and injured about 140 police officers.

One of her aides said she was considering picking a Republican who has taken the attack seriously for one of her eight slots. Though the aide did not say whom the speaker had in mind, speculation immediately turned to Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a former member of House Republican leadership who was removed from her post after she pushed the party to hold itself and former President Donald J. Trump responsible for fomenting the violence with false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.

Ms. Cheney told reporters Monday evening that she had not spoken to Ms. Pelosi about the panel. Asked if she would serve if requested, Ms. Cheney said, “It’s up to the speaker.”

The House is setting up a battle with the Senate over how best to invest in scientific innovation to strengthen American competitiveness.

On Monday, it passed two bipartisan bills aimed at bolstering research and development programs in the United States.

The bills are the House’s answer to the sprawling Endless Frontier Act that the Senate overwhelmingly passed this month. The Endless Frontier Act would direct unprecedented federal investments into a slew of emerging technologies in a bid to compete with China.

But lawmakers who drafted the House measures took a different approach, calling for a doubling of funding over the next five years for traditional research initiatives at the National Science Foundation and a 7 percent increase for the Energy Department’s Office of Science.

Lawmakers and their aides must try to reconcile the Senate-passed legislation with the two bills passed on Monday, prompting a major debate on Capitol Hill about industrial policy and how to strengthen American competitiveness, a goal with broad bipartisan support.

“One of the core disagreements or tensions between the House and the Senate version is that the Senate version is really focused on China,” said Robert D. Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. The House bills, he added, prioritize “more social policy issues,” including science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and climate change.

Xavier Becerra, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, pressed Congress on Monday to overhaul the nation’s immigration system after he visited an emergency shelter for migrant children on the Fort Bliss military base near El Paso.

“I would really encourage our colleagues in the House and the Senate to consider taking that proposal on so we can get to a system that works,” Mr. Becerra said on a call with reporters, referring to a plan that President Biden offered early in his administration. Passing a measure is becoming increasingly unlikely.

The temporary shelter at Fort Bliss, which is made out of soft-sided tents on desert land, is among about a dozen that the Biden administration set up this spring to house a record number of migrant children and teenagers coming across the southwest border.

The care the Biden administration is providing at the shelter has drawn complaints, including reports that thousands of children slept on cots and in close quarters, and that there had not been enough case workers to place the children with family members in the United States. Mr. Becerra said on Monday that his agency had trained more case workers and was now discharging children to relatives more quickly.

As of Monday morning, there were more than 14,000 migrant children under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services, about 5,000 of whom were staying in emergency shelters like Fort Bliss that lack the higher standard of care required for the department’s network of licensed shelters. The rest are in facilities that are part of the licensed shelter network, or in another facility with a higher standard of care than what is in place at the emergency shelters.

Mr. Becerra first visited the Fort Bliss facility in late May, when about 4,300 children were being held there. The number has dropped significantly since then in response to concerns about the huge site, which was designed to hold up to 10,000 children. Mr. Becerra said on Monday that fewer than 800 children, all boys, were now staying there.

“We understand that we have a job to do and a legal obligation to make sure they are safe and healthy,” Mr. Becerra said of the migrant children in the department’s custody.

Most adult migrants arriving at the border this year have been turned back because of a public health rule applied during the pandemic. But the Biden administration has been allowing children and teenagers who arrive alone to enter the country.

“We need to fix this broken immigration system,” Mr. Becerra said. “We need to be prepared to handle circumstances like this, and we need to do it in the best way possible.”

Liberal House Democrats, squeezed between President Biden’s personal lobbying for a bipartisan infrastructure deal and their own ambitions for a far more expansive domestic agenda, are warning that they will not hesitate to bring down the accord without action on their long-sought priorities.

The brewing fight, which pits progressives against moderates more aligned with the president’s tactics, is exposing cracks in the party’s fragile strategy for enacting its economic plans.

Democratic leaders have said the Senate centrists’ agreement, which would pump $1.2 trillion into roads, bridges, tunnels and broadband, will not get through Congress without a second, larger bill. That measure includes progressive wish-list items that Republicans have rejected, such as universal preschool and community college access, a health care expansion and a broad effort to combat climate change.

But progressive House members have begun questioning the depth of that commitment, particularly after Mr. Biden walked back a threat he made to condition the narrower bill on the more costly one, and as he and other administration officials begin a lobbying blitz around the country to build support for the infrastructure package.

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden will promote the deal in La Crosse, Wis., the home district of a long-targeted House Democrat, Representative Ron Kind. And on Monday, Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, toured a crumbling tunnel to Manhattan with two New Jersey Democrats, both of whom said they came away convinced that Congress should move now on infrastructure.