refugees like Khurami and Jamalzada
were given priority for work permits
and help from resettlement agencies.
Uniting for Ukraine, however, does
not off er initial resettlement support,
and it is unclear whether applications
for work authorization will be prior-
itized. Where authorization used to
be processed in a matter of weeks, it
now takes anywhere from eight to 15
months. ‘‘These policies are reactive
— that’s why you see everything look-
ing a little diff erent,’’ said Melanie
Nezer, the senior vice president for
global public aff airs at HIAS, refer-
ring to the discrepancies between
policies for Afghans and Ukrainians.
‘‘This is a new way of doing resettle-
ment.’’ A reliance on sponsors has the
positive eff ect of building communi-
ty support for new arrivals, she said.
‘‘But,’’ she added, ‘‘it is not the refugee
program. It is not the same.’’
Arsirii’s parents, who moved to
the United States years ago, helped
book her a ticket from Poland to Can-
cún , and an aunt, also in the United
States, donated additional money for
the trip. From Cancún , Arsirii pur-
chased a ticket to Tijuana, where she
met a group of Ukrainian Americans
who off ered to drive her and Karoli-
na to the border. Information came
in disordered chunks, one fact at a
time, like a puzzle she was expected
to solve without having all the pieces.
At the U.S. border with Mexico, she
was detained for a night and then let
out on humanitarian parole with her
release papers.
Arsirii then fl ew to Brooklyn, join-
ing her parents in their studio apart-
ment overlooking Avenue X. She and
her daughter slept at one end of the
studio, her parents at the other. They
fell asleep and woke up every morn-
ing gazing at each other from across
the room. ‘‘It took me two weeks to
even realize where I was,’’ Arsirii told
me through a translator. ‘‘My mother
encouraged me to leave the house.
She took me walking in Brooklyn. We
went to other neighborhoods.’’
A family friend introduced Arsi-
rii to an immigration lawyer, who
helped her apply for temporary
protected status, a designation that
comes with a work permit and can
allow a migrant to stay in the coun-
try for up to 18 months. A volunteer
was also translating documents toKarolina. She and her daughter
arrived in New York on March 15
after fl eeing from their hometown,
Ivano-Frankivsk, in Western Ukraine.
As they drove to Poland against a
soundtrack of air-raid sirens, Arsi-
rii, who is 32, told her daughter that
the Ukrainian military wouldn’t let
the bombs hit them. She repeat-
ed it enough times that she almost
believed it was true.
In Poland, Arsirii discovered
online that she could travel to Mex-
ico without a visa and cross the bor-
der in Tijuana. In the early weeks of
the war, there was no United States
policy on Ukrainian arrivals. People
were fi nding their way into the Unit-
ed States on tourist visas, if they
already had one, or through Mexico.
On April 21, the Biden administration
announced Uniting for Ukraine, a
policy allowing Ukrainians to apply
for entry into the United States if they
had the sponsorship of a U.S. citizen
or an NGO. Those trying to cross the
border from Mexico, however, face
the same challenges as other asy-
lum seekers. In Tijuana, thousands
of Ukrainian refugees are living in a
camp, awaiting entry.
Like Afghans, Ukrainians who
make it into the United States are
off ered humanitarian parole. Afghan↑Farhad Khurami and his wife, Farzana Jamalzada, who fl ed Afghanistan together.