Besides Afghans who have already been approved for SIVs, though, everyone should go to third countries. This serves the important humanitarian function of getting them out of harm’s way in Afghanistan. It also provides us the time and space to vet and process them and eventually bring SIVs and others who are most deserving into the United States.

It is important to realize, on the one hand, that this category of people is different from, say, the Syria migrants who walked into Europe during the Syrian civil war. These Afghans are not random people fleeing a conflict, but those who chose to identify themselves with us and Western values when the chips were down.

It is also true, on the other hand, that there is a limit to any Western country’s assimilative capacity. France has had trouble for decades absorbing the Muslim migrants who came there from its colonies. Perhaps we are better at assimilation than the French, but the large Somali diaspora in the Minneapolis area has at times been a seedbed of radicalism and discontent.