About 14,500 Ukrainians have filed applications as of last week to come to the United States under a humanitarian parole program that allows Ukrainians to stay with american sponsors.
The administration of US President Joe Biden hopes most ukrainians whose lives have been upended by Russia’s invasion of their country to remain in Europe. But in March, his administration announced that he would wait up to 100,000 stay and work in the US for up to two years.
The “Unite for Ukraine” program was launched on April 25, and potential sponsors are required to upload details about their employment and assets. Applicants must pass identity and security checks before they can travel to the US and be considered for enrollment.
The “Unite for Ukraine” program provides a streamlined process for displaced Ukrainian citizens and their immediate family members outside the United States to come to the United States and stay temporarily for up to two years. https://t.co/ivatxwIgaA
— Baker Donelson (@Baker_Donelson) May 9, 2022
The program to help Ukrainians fleeing war comes amid continued pressure on the Biden administration to allocate more military aid to Ukraine and issue more sanctions against Russia. According to the United Nations, more than 5.8 million Ukrainians have fled their country since the February 24 invasion.
On March 3, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would extend temporary protected status Ukrainians who have already been in the country for 18 months.
The United for Ukraine program has given hope to Iryna Bashynskyy of Portland, Oregon. Since February, Bashynskyy has been looking for ways to get her niece, Yana, out of Ukraine. Now, Bashynskyy is collecting documents, including tax returns and bank statements from her.
“It’s a hustle and bustle,” Bashynskyy told Reuters. “But I will try to make it.”
Yana asked that she only be identified by name for security reasons.
“You need to somehow escape from here,” Yana, 23, said through a translator from her apartment in kyiv. “I am afraid for my life, for my future. Because you don’t know where a bomb will fall, at what time and what will happen.”
New York-based attorney Marina Shepelsky has been fielding hundreds of calls from people with relatives in Ukraine. During the first month and a half of the Russian invasion, Shepelsky, a Ukrainian refugee whose family fled the Soviet Union in 1989, advised them to apply for tourist visas.
“Now I’m discouraging it a little bit,” Shepelsky said, saying United for Ukraine offers “a better status.”
Nearly 3,500 Ukrainians received temporary US visas for tourism or business in March, a sharp increase from 900 in February, according to US State Department statistics.
Many Ukrainians had also been flying to Mexico and applying for asylum in the Border between the United States and Mexico by land.
Despite an era of coronavirus pandemic restriction instead, the US hundreds allowed of Ukrainians to apply for asylum at the border, drawing rebuke from human rights groups who denounced the fact that asylum seekers of other nationalities were being turned away, and shed light on what the Ukrainians said was a complicated legal process to bring people to the US
DHS said that beginning April 25, when United for Ukraine was launched, Ukrainians at the southwest border who did not have valid visas or prior authorization to travel to the U.S. through United for Ukraine would be I could deny them entry.
The Associated Press reported last week that some refugees who arrived at the US border in Tijuana were told they would no longer be admitted.
Leonard Mogul is seeking a spousal immigration visa for the woman he married in a 30-minute non-denominational Zoom wedding in early March. Her wedding ring was a ring that he had bought her during a New Year’s vacation in Cancun. He had previously tried to obtain a tourist visa and was given an appointment for a visa interview at the end of September.
“I didn’t want her to be alone in Europe for so long,” said Mogul, who is seeking a spouse visa and does not plan to apply for Uniting for Ukraine.
Artem Plakhotnyi, a dance teacher based in Scottsdale, Arizona, had been trying for weeks to book an emergency visa appointment for his sister-in-law and her four-year-old twins. Four days after Russian soldiers invaded Ukraine, his cousin and his cousin’s nine-year-old daughter died trying to flee Kharkiv, he said. After repeated attempts, he boarded a flight to Warsaw and then flew with his relatives to Tijuana, where they applied for and received humanitarian parole last month.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Ukrainian refugees are camping in Mexico City as they wait for the US government to allow them to enter the country.
About 500 evacuees have been waiting since last week in large tents under a blazing sun in a dusty field on the eastern side of Mexico’s sprawling capital. The camp has only been open for a week and 50 to 100 people arrive every day.