More than 3 million Ukrainians have fled their ravaged country, and the great majority of them are in the border states of Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Moldova and Hungary, according to the United Nations.
As Russian missiles obliterate more cities, refugees crowded into family basements and church social halls across Eastern Europe confront a painful choice to hold out where they are or try to be resettled as refugees, possibly in faraway countries.
Over 5,000 miles away, the reality is setting in for Ukrainian Americans eager to bring their relatives to safety that despite government pledges of solidarity, getting into the United States is a lengthy and cumbersome process that remains largely unchanged from before the war, according to those trying to bring relatives into the country and advocates who are helping them.
Still, a trickle of Ukrainians are making it to the United States to reunite with relatives, for medical care, or on tourist visas, even as many of them remain torn between craving safety for their families and feeling drawn to the mission of defeating the Russians.
Khomaziuk, who works at the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, understands that to her sister Lidiia, a 40-year-old music teacher, this is the time to keep on baking cookies for soldiers and doing whatever she can to help other Ukrainians who’ve had to flee from burning homes.
“But I want to be able to bring my nephew and niece here,” Khomaziuk said. “I’m ready to go fly and pick them up at the border.” She remains, however, stuck in waiting mode, dependent on a U.S. visa system that is hopelessly backed up. “They really need to fly more customs people into Warsaw to speed up the process,” said Khomaziuk, 36.
Some lawmakers and advocacy groups are urging the Biden administration to expedite the arrival of Ukrainians. But officials say the refugee system is not built for speed, as the U.S. vetting process often takes years.
President Biden has said he would accept up to 125,000 refugees from around the world this fiscal year, but barely 6,500 arrived between October and February, federal records show. More than 20 million refugees are under the U.N. refugee agency’s mandate, from troubled nations such as Syria, the Central African Republic and Venezuela. That number does not include more than 70,000 Afghan military interpreters and other allies the U.S. government evacuated from Afghanistan last year as the Taliban took over that country.
In the case of Ukraine, a State Department official said in a written statement, most refugees want to stay in Europe “in the hope they can return home soon” and if there are Ukrainians “for whom resettlement in the United States is a better option,” U.S. officials will work with U.N. and European officials to consider them, “bearing in mind that resettlement to the United States is not a quick process.”
One backdoor entrance to the United States that a few Ukrainians have been using is to fly to the Mexican border and beg to be allowed in. Homeland Security officials said a trickle of Ukrainians, with a daily volume in the “double digits,” have been taking advantage of the fact that they don’t need a visa to enter Mexico, so they fly to a Mexican border city, usually Tijuana, then head to the U.S. port of entry at San Ysidro, south of San Diego.
U.S. government data show that at least 1,300 Ukrainians were taken into custody along the Mexico border between Oct. 1 and Feb. 28. Homeland Security officials said they are allowing some Ukrainians to enter, exempting them from the public health order that U.S. authorities have used during the pandemic to turn back most asylum seekers.
“We are responding to the humanitarian crisis caused by the tragic events in Ukraine by granting humanitarian parole, on a case-by-case and temporary basis, to Ukrainians who have fled the crisis,” Homeland Security spokesman Eduardo Maia Silva told The Post.