These Ukrainians arrived under a Biden programme. They ended up homeless
The Ukrainians coming now are fleeing the worst ground war in Europe since World War II. More than 7,000 civilians have died, and supporters say Uniting for Ukraine may have saved the lives of thousands
Published: 03:04 PM,Apr 03,2023 | EDITED : 07:04 PM,Apr 03,2023
Maria Muzun, left, and Stanislav Holotiuk, who fled Ukraine, hoping to find refuge in the home of an American they met on Facebook, in New York.
For weeks, Stanislav Holotiuk had been searching for someone to help him flee the war in Ukraine and sponsor his resettlement in the United States.
He trawled through message boards on sites like Facebook late at night, when it was daytime in America. A few people in New York City and Chicago promised to help, then disappeared. Others asked him for money. Exasperated, he impersonated his girlfriend to see if that would change his luck.
After reaching out to more than 50 Americans, he finally received a message: “Sure, I’ll help. Just send me your details.”
Holotiuk, 27, was not sure of the sender’s real name. The Facebook profile picture for the account showed an avatar. But finding a willing Samaritan sponsor was a prerequisite for a newly minted US government program aimed at resettling thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
The program, led by the Department of Homeland Security, promised to vet both parties, so Holotiuk put his future into the hands of a stranger. In less than three days, he received his immigration papers.
But when he landed at Kennedy International Airport shortly afterward with his girlfriend, Maria Muzun, 22, in September, no one was there to greet them.
Stuck, with just $100 between the two of them, Holotiuk and Muzun spent their first night in the United States sleeping rough under a Coney Island pier in Brooklyn. One night turned into weeks, so they pooled their dollars and bought a tent at a Walmart near JFK.
Holotiuk’s case illuminates the ad hoc nature of the sponsorship programme, Uniting for Ukraine, which was created two months after the Russian invasion last year and which the Biden administration has said was a radical shift in policy to help thousands of desperate people fleeing the war.
The program departs from the traditional, more time-consuming resettlement process, in which nongovernmental agencies help house refugees and assign them caseworkers. After a vetting process that requires volunteer sponsors to sign a financial declaration and provide an income statement, Uniting for Ukraine hands the care of the refugees over to private individuals with no additional oversight. The Biden administration has also opened the process to Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans.
The Ukrainians coming now are fleeing the worst ground war in Europe since World War II. More than 7,000 civilians have died, and supporters say Uniting for Ukraine may have saved the lives of thousands.
“We are looking at this as a policy change that has allowed a significant number of people in need to very quickly and at scale leave a very dangerous situation,” said Anya McMurray, president of Welcome. US, a platform that was built after the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021 to match Afghan refugees with US sponsors. The initiative, whose honorary chairs include former presidents and first ladies, expanded to Ukrainians last year.
“I can’t think of another time in our history when that has happened at that scale,” McMurray added. “The question was, do we as a country ignore that tremendous need or do we find a creative alternative?”
For many of the Ukrainians coming through the program, the sponsorships are going well, supporters of the program say. Some have settled in with family, and others have been embraced by Americans eager to help in the war effort. Homeland Security has issued warnings to Ukrainian refugees about the dangers of human trafficking, and the vetting process has been tightened in recent months.
Still, situations like Holotiuk’s are “widespread,” according to Kelly Agnew-Barajas, director of refugee resettlement at Catholic Charities.
She said it was a common pattern for people to sign up as sponsors “who kind of were naive, thinking, ‘I’m doing a good deed,’ but then really not following it up with anything.”
Refugee resettlement agencies say that many refugees have arrived at their doors after sponsors bailed, despite volunteers signing a form declaring a two-year commitment to the person they’re resettling. Agency staff members also cited more extreme cases, like a Ukrainian woman who was asked by her sponsor to become a surrogate mother and another who had her passport confiscated and was pressured to become a second wife. New York City officials say that some Ukrainians have ended up in homeless shelters.
About 282,000 Ukrainians have been either authorised to travel to or have already arrived in the United States as of March 21 under Uniting for Ukraine, which launched in April 2022, according to the most recent statistics from Homeland Security. The refugees are granted a temporary legal status known as humanitarian parole, which allows them to work legally.
By far, New York has welcomed the most refugees coming to the United States. Many go to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, home to a sizable Ukrainian diaspora.
In addition to having the financial means, sponsors under Uniting for Ukraine must promise to house refugees and help them with health care and enrolling children in school. But the financial threshold is just above the poverty line, Agnew-Barajas said.
“It’s a pretty low bar,” she said.
Angelo Fernandez, a spokesperson for Homeland Security, explained the vetting process as “a series of fraud- and security-based screening measures” aimed at “protecting the refugees against exploitation and abuse to ensure that they are able to financially support the beneficiary.”
Even when refugees connect with sponsors, problems can ensue. Elena Afanasieva, 38, arrived in a small town in Pennsylvania last June with her two daughters, who are 13 and 16. Afanasieva is originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, where she worked in a beauty salon. She found a sponsor, a 56-year-old woman who promised to help her until she was self-sufficient, through a Facebook group.
Not long after she and her daughters arrived, things started to go awry.
Local groups raised money to help support the refugee family, but Afanasieva said the sponsor wouldn’t let her use it to pay for her daughter’s school supplies, telling her she was selfish for asking for the money.
Eventually, Afanasieva said, she was asked to leave. The sponsor did not respond to requests for an interview.
In desperation, Afanasieva moved to New York City, where she knew a friend from high school. She and her daughters contacted Catholic Charities for help and now live in a homeless shelter — a small hotel room in Manhattan — where they share a queen size bed.
“I feel excited to be here but also was disappointed by what humanity had to offer,” she said through a translator.
Many refugees are settling in just fine, though sometimes the arrangements can be uncomfortable. Zoya Tatarinova, 63, was sponsored by a distant third cousin living in New Jersey. But she ended up staying in the living room of a friend in New York City. What was supposed to be a short sojourn turned into months.
“I felt guilty that weeks turned longer,” she said.
The traditional process for sponsoring refugees is led by humanitarian organisations, such as HIAS, a nonprofit, which said it has a tighter vetting process and recommends that a group of people serve together as sponsors so that the financial burden is spread out. The organization also discourages beneficiaries from living with their sponsors in order to avoid relationship breakdowns.
But the tighter the vetting, the smaller the pool of sponsors.
The number of sponsors for Ukrainian refugees approved by HIAS is in the low thousands, compared with hundreds of thousands for Uniting for Ukraine. Supporters of Uniting for Ukraine say that overall, the program has been successful. - The New York Times
Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura
The writer covers politics to social issues spanning
Europe, the Middle East and Africa
He trawled through message boards on sites like Facebook late at night, when it was daytime in America. A few people in New York City and Chicago promised to help, then disappeared. Others asked him for money. Exasperated, he impersonated his girlfriend to see if that would change his luck.
After reaching out to more than 50 Americans, he finally received a message: “Sure, I’ll help. Just send me your details.”
Holotiuk, 27, was not sure of the sender’s real name. The Facebook profile picture for the account showed an avatar. But finding a willing Samaritan sponsor was a prerequisite for a newly minted US government program aimed at resettling thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
The program, led by the Department of Homeland Security, promised to vet both parties, so Holotiuk put his future into the hands of a stranger. In less than three days, he received his immigration papers.
But when he landed at Kennedy International Airport shortly afterward with his girlfriend, Maria Muzun, 22, in September, no one was there to greet them.
Stuck, with just $100 between the two of them, Holotiuk and Muzun spent their first night in the United States sleeping rough under a Coney Island pier in Brooklyn. One night turned into weeks, so they pooled their dollars and bought a tent at a Walmart near JFK.
Holotiuk’s case illuminates the ad hoc nature of the sponsorship programme, Uniting for Ukraine, which was created two months after the Russian invasion last year and which the Biden administration has said was a radical shift in policy to help thousands of desperate people fleeing the war.
The program departs from the traditional, more time-consuming resettlement process, in which nongovernmental agencies help house refugees and assign them caseworkers. After a vetting process that requires volunteer sponsors to sign a financial declaration and provide an income statement, Uniting for Ukraine hands the care of the refugees over to private individuals with no additional oversight. The Biden administration has also opened the process to Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans.
The Ukrainians coming now are fleeing the worst ground war in Europe since World War II. More than 7,000 civilians have died, and supporters say Uniting for Ukraine may have saved the lives of thousands.
“We are looking at this as a policy change that has allowed a significant number of people in need to very quickly and at scale leave a very dangerous situation,” said Anya McMurray, president of Welcome. US, a platform that was built after the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021 to match Afghan refugees with US sponsors. The initiative, whose honorary chairs include former presidents and first ladies, expanded to Ukrainians last year.
“I can’t think of another time in our history when that has happened at that scale,” McMurray added. “The question was, do we as a country ignore that tremendous need or do we find a creative alternative?”
For many of the Ukrainians coming through the program, the sponsorships are going well, supporters of the program say. Some have settled in with family, and others have been embraced by Americans eager to help in the war effort. Homeland Security has issued warnings to Ukrainian refugees about the dangers of human trafficking, and the vetting process has been tightened in recent months.
Still, situations like Holotiuk’s are “widespread,” according to Kelly Agnew-Barajas, director of refugee resettlement at Catholic Charities.
She said it was a common pattern for people to sign up as sponsors “who kind of were naive, thinking, ‘I’m doing a good deed,’ but then really not following it up with anything.”
Refugee resettlement agencies say that many refugees have arrived at their doors after sponsors bailed, despite volunteers signing a form declaring a two-year commitment to the person they’re resettling. Agency staff members also cited more extreme cases, like a Ukrainian woman who was asked by her sponsor to become a surrogate mother and another who had her passport confiscated and was pressured to become a second wife. New York City officials say that some Ukrainians have ended up in homeless shelters.
About 282,000 Ukrainians have been either authorised to travel to or have already arrived in the United States as of March 21 under Uniting for Ukraine, which launched in April 2022, according to the most recent statistics from Homeland Security. The refugees are granted a temporary legal status known as humanitarian parole, which allows them to work legally.
By far, New York has welcomed the most refugees coming to the United States. Many go to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, home to a sizable Ukrainian diaspora.
In addition to having the financial means, sponsors under Uniting for Ukraine must promise to house refugees and help them with health care and enrolling children in school. But the financial threshold is just above the poverty line, Agnew-Barajas said.
“It’s a pretty low bar,” she said.
Angelo Fernandez, a spokesperson for Homeland Security, explained the vetting process as “a series of fraud- and security-based screening measures” aimed at “protecting the refugees against exploitation and abuse to ensure that they are able to financially support the beneficiary.”
Even when refugees connect with sponsors, problems can ensue. Elena Afanasieva, 38, arrived in a small town in Pennsylvania last June with her two daughters, who are 13 and 16. Afanasieva is originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, where she worked in a beauty salon. She found a sponsor, a 56-year-old woman who promised to help her until she was self-sufficient, through a Facebook group.
Not long after she and her daughters arrived, things started to go awry.
Local groups raised money to help support the refugee family, but Afanasieva said the sponsor wouldn’t let her use it to pay for her daughter’s school supplies, telling her she was selfish for asking for the money.
Eventually, Afanasieva said, she was asked to leave. The sponsor did not respond to requests for an interview.
In desperation, Afanasieva moved to New York City, where she knew a friend from high school. She and her daughters contacted Catholic Charities for help and now live in a homeless shelter — a small hotel room in Manhattan — where they share a queen size bed.
“I feel excited to be here but also was disappointed by what humanity had to offer,” she said through a translator.
Many refugees are settling in just fine, though sometimes the arrangements can be uncomfortable. Zoya Tatarinova, 63, was sponsored by a distant third cousin living in New Jersey. But she ended up staying in the living room of a friend in New York City. What was supposed to be a short sojourn turned into months.
“I felt guilty that weeks turned longer,” she said.
The traditional process for sponsoring refugees is led by humanitarian organisations, such as HIAS, a nonprofit, which said it has a tighter vetting process and recommends that a group of people serve together as sponsors so that the financial burden is spread out. The organization also discourages beneficiaries from living with their sponsors in order to avoid relationship breakdowns.
But the tighter the vetting, the smaller the pool of sponsors.
The number of sponsors for Ukrainian refugees approved by HIAS is in the low thousands, compared with hundreds of thousands for Uniting for Ukraine. Supporters of Uniting for Ukraine say that overall, the program has been successful. - The New York Times
Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura
The writer covers politics to social issues spanning
Europe, the Middle East and Africa