Faced with a shrinking pool of visas, the U.S. embassy in Kabul has started turning away Afghan military translators and other Afghan nationals seeking to immigrate to the United States through a decade-old special visa program.

A State Department official said Friday the embassy stopped scheduling new special immigrant visa interviews for Afghans on March 1 after concluding that it had enough unused visas only for those who are already in the final stages of the application process.

As of March 5, only 1,437 special immigrant visas were available for Afghans, while there were more than 15,000 Afghans in various stages of the application process, the official said, adding that the embassy expects to exhaust its pool of visas by June 1.

"The department regularly makes adjustments to our visa processing in order to ensure that we do not exceed the visa numbers allocated by Congress," the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss the change in policy. "We do not expect to resume scheduling appointments unless new SIV numbers are allocated by Congress."

While the official said the U.S. remains committed to supporting Afghans that have helped the U.S. mission at great personal risk, advocates for Afghan refugees slammed the decision.

"This devastating development means that thousands of trusted allies will remain in danger, waiting for Congress to allocate visas that were clearly needed months ago," said Betsy Fisher, policy director for the International Refugee Assistance Project in New York.

