The US finally came out with their “Uniting for Ukraine” immigration application website today. It’s the “fast-track” immigration program that was promised a while ago to allow about 100,000 Ukrainians to come to the US, provided they have a sponsor to cover their costs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to take advantage of it.
While sponsorship is not a problem, the program requires that refugees coming here have a passport with which to travel. That seems to ignore the reality that a lot of people — including Katya 2 and Vanya — had to leave their homes without such documentation (for any number of reasons). While Katya and Vanya have had international passports issued to them, they aren’t in possession of them and the Ukraine government isn’t able to supply replacements at this time.
At present, it would appear that the Canadian program is going to work better. Their program does account for people not having all their documentation and is willing to work with that. Staying with us would be preferred, but getting them to Western Canada is second best; at least we and/or Viktoria would be able to visit regularly (and a US dollar may go farther in Canada than it does in the US).
Why is it other countries have much more common sense than the US??
That’s too bad that the United States can’t be more accomodating under the circumstances. But, I like your positivity! Canada is a beautiful country and I’m hopeful that everything will work out.
Are you sure there isn’t an alternate path? There usually is. The front office might not know, or may be too overwhelmed to act. Still, often there is often an alternate path.
You’ve dealt with USCIS; you know how they are. It’s only taken them two months to put in an “emergency” process which is only a slightly modified version of their existing humanitarian parole program. And by kicking this off, they’ve effectively shut down the alternate path that was being used (going to the border and requesting asylum/parole). At this point, Canada remains the less ideal but more viable option.