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Editor’s note:
Most of our team lives and works in Kyiv. Jackie, our American colleague, lives in New York, and from there she sees up close what life is like for Ukrainians who left the country when the full-scale war began.
Wherever the war has taken Ukrainians, we want to keep following their stories, and we can only do that with readers like you.
The easiest way to stay with us is to subscribe for free. You’ll get stories like this one, from Kyiv to New York, straight to your inbox.
OUR LEAD STORY:
NEW YORK, U.S. – When Sofiia walks into her next job interview, she plans to bring two documents. The first is her work permit, which expires October 19. The second is a printed screenshot of a federal law that says the permit is still good for another six months.
Back home, just outside of Kyiv, Sofiia ran her own company in human services. (Sofiia is a pseudonym; she still has family in occupied territory.) Now, living in the southern U.S., she’s applying for jobs as a cashier’s assistant at Kroger and a kitchen worker at a small restaurant.
She has met with countless lawyers, trying to understand the true expiration of her legal status. “You need to understand that the situation is very serious and very dangerous for you,” she recalled one lawyer telling her. “Because nobody, nobody can predict what will happen.”
A week after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration offered temporary protected status, or TPS, to Ukrainians already in the U.S. for 18 months, which would allow them to live and work legally.
On October 19, that TPS for more than 100,000 Ukrainians in the U.S. is technically set to expire. But the law gives the Secretary of Homeland Security a deadline to make a decision on whether to extend or end a country’s TPS, and it must be made at least 60 days before expiration. For Ukraine, that was August 20, and that day came and went without DHS ever announcing a decision. So, legally, TPS for Ukrainians is automatically extended for another six months.
Now, people like Sofiia are just assuming they have a little more time to continue the lives they’ve built in the U.S. But many employers don’t know that or really care to understand the technicality, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) website still lists October 19 as the expiration date.
After the paywall:
What do Ukrainians and Salvadorans have in common?
The gift from American neighbors that made Sofiia cry;
Why courts may not save Ukrainians if DHS ends TPS;
What could still save Ukrainians’ protected status?