AUBURN, Calif. — Paul and Rose Chorney’s home near Sacramento has turned in recent weeks into a way station of sorts for Ukrainian refugees: A couple and their three children occupy one of the three bedrooms; another family of four is sleeping in a camper in the driveway; and a studio apartment is going up outside to make room for more arrivals.
“There are going to be a lot more Ukrainian families coming, however they can,” said Mr. Chorney, 36, a Ukrainian whose family immigrated to the United States when he was 18 and whose church has made it a mission to help people displaced by the Russian invasion.
He recently took time off from his roofing business to drive to Tijuana, Mexico, to pick up one of the families, signing on to sponsor them for admission to the United States and driving them to Northern California.
“Please God, help families get here safely,” he prayed one day this past week over a lunch of toasted ham-and-cheese croissants prepared by Mrs. Chorney for their growing group of guests.
Of the more than three million Ukrainians who have fled their war-torn country, very few have come to the United States. The absence of a clear signal from Washington on how many it is willing to accept and questions about whether Europeans will get preferential treatment over refugees from Asia, Africa and the Middle East have created deep uncertainty, leaving displaced Ukrainians to make their way to the border and hope for help from private sponsors like the Chorneys.
“We’re going to welcome Ukrainian refugees with open arms if, in fact, they come all the way here,” President Biden said this month.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has said that the U.S. priority is to help European countries that are inundated with refugees, most of whom may prefer to stay in Europe, close to family and their home country. But there is growing pressure on the Biden administration to find direct pathways for displaced Ukrainians to come to the United States.
That is happening already, as administration officials discuss speeding up visas for religious minorities and thousands of people who already have relatives in the United States, a process that normally takes years. Some Ukrainians are making a roundabout journey to reach Mexico, where they hope to cross over, and others are attempting to secure appointments at U.S. consulates in Europe to request tourist visas.
The federal government announced early this month that it would extend Temporary Protected Status to Ukrainians, enabling some 30,000 people who were in the United States as of March 1 to remain legally in the country for 18 months. But that does not help people waiting in makeshift shelters in countries neighboring Ukraine.
Refugee resettlement is a drawn-out bureaucratic process. It begins when a person is officially designated a refugee by the United Nations. Once assigned to the United States, applicants must pass interviews, background checks and medical exams. Winning approval and ultimately being relocated can take years, and former President Donald J. Trump downsized the refugee program, prompting arrivals to plunge precipitously.
For decades, the United States resettled more refugees than all other countries combined. About 3.5 million refugees have been admitted since 1975, though only a few thousand of those have come in the past five years. With conflicts brewing around the world, Democrats and Republicans have been at odds over whether the country should bear responsibility for people fleeing strife, and, if so, how many people to admit and from where.
“Anti-refugee sentiment has been bubbling, and as a result, our refugee program is unable to meet this moment,” said Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy organization.
In 2015 and 2016, Germany received about 800,000 Syrians seeking asylum after Angela Merkel, who was then the chancellor, made the decision to admit people escaping the war, and policymakers introduced measures to bolster the efficiency of refugee processing.
Around the same time in the United States, 31 governors — most of them Republicans — tried to block the resettlement of Syrians in their states, citing security concerns. Among them was former Vice President Mike Pence, when he was Indiana’s governor.
Fewer than 23,000 Syrians have been admitted to the United States as refugees since 2016.
Nearly 40 Democratic lawmakers last week called on Mr. Biden to admit more refugees, and to expedite legal entry for Ukrainians who want to join family members already in the United States.
In general, Americans of both parties have shown support for welcoming Ukrainian refugees. A YouGov poll of 1,500 Americans this month showed 54 percent in favor of admitting them and 25 percent opposed. Those numbers went down significantly for Afghan refugees, favored by 42 percent, and Syrians, favored by 35 percent. A separate Pew poll showed that 57 percent of Republicans and 80 percent of Democrats said they supported the admission of Ukrainian refugees.
The ceiling for refugees from all countries under President Barack Obama in 2017 had been set at 110,000, but Mr. Trump shrunk the number that the United States would accept to 15,000 in 2020 as part of his agenda to curb all immigration, especially of Muslims.
The cuts forced nonprofits contracted to resettle refugees, like the International Rescue Committee, to close offices around the country, and the government drastically scaled back resources, such as asylum officers, that were devoted to refugee processing.
Mr. Biden raised the ceiling on refugee admissions to 62,500 for the 2021 fiscal year, but only 11,411 arrived during that time frame, a historical low, as the system struggled to regain its footing and the coronavirus pandemic hampered overseas operations.
“The resettlement infrastructure, decimated under Trump, is still struggling to receive and integrate the Afghans who just recently arrived,” said Bill Frelick, refugee director for Human Rights Watch.
This fiscal year’s cap is 125,000 but only 6,494 refugees were admitted in the first five months, in part because agencies have been overstretched providing services to 76,000 Afghan evacuees, who are not counted toward the cap. Of the total number, 10,000 slots were allocated for people from Europe, a number advocates have asked the United States to expand.
The Sacramento area is home to a 200,000-strong Slavic community, mostly evangelical Christians who arrived as refugees fleeing persecution in the former Soviet Union. In recent weeks they have worried, and prayed, for relatives and friends from Ukraine.
Many have been waiting for family members to join them in the United States since filling out the necessary forms even before the outbreak of war. But consular closures during the pandemic had stalled processing, and now they are hoping the Biden administration will expedite their paperwork.
“As a first step, I would love to see the United States let immigrants come who have relatives here,” said Vadim Dashkevych, a Ukrainian immigrant who is lead pastor at the Chorneys’ church, Spring of Life, a Baptist congregation that is sponsoring several of the new arrivals.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to Know
The Biden-Xi talk. In a two-hour call with China’s President Xi Jinping, President Biden discussed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, detailing the implications and consequences if Beijing were to provide material support to Russia in its attacks.
In the city of Mariupol. At least 130 people were rescued from a theater that was destroyed in the Ukrainian city. Up to 1,000 people were believed to be taking shelter in the building, and hundreds remain unaccounted for.
An attack in the west. A missile strike rattled the outskirts of Lviv, a western city that has been a haven for people fleeing areas under siege. The mayor of the city said several missiles had struck an aircraft repair plant at the airport in Lviv, destroying the buildings.
A looming energy crisis. The International Energy Agency said that the repercussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are likely to intensify over the next several months, and nations around the world should respond by reducing their use of oil and gas.
Russian losses. British intelligence reports say that Russian forces have “made minimal progress on land, sea or air in recent days.” The Pentagon estimated that 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, more than the total of American troops killed over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But those who arrive on their own at the border can be released into the United States only if they can provide the name, address and telephone number of a sponsor who has agreed to take responsibility for them.
Mr. Dashkevych and several congregants have agreed to sponsor such people — helping them find housing, sign up for health care and enroll children in school.
“If people are going to need help, and the law of this country permits us, we will do this,” the pastor said.
The people now breaking bread with the Chorneys at their kitchen table said they had had nowhere else to go. When they heard about Mr. Dashkevych from other refugees, they decided to look him up.
“We found the pastor on Facebook, messaged him and he helped us,” said Taisiia Bondarenko, who is staying in the trailer on the Chorney property with her husband, Volodymyr, and two children, Artem, 13, and Sofia, 10. “We have no family at all here, but we knew we would be safe here,” she said. “Going through Mexico was the fastest way.”
She said they had scrounged together their savings, leaving behind their oldest daughter, one of their mothers and their farm with a milking cow and chickens.
Also staying with Mr. Chorney is a childhood friend, Leonid Prisniak, 36, who had fled to Romania with his family and was turned away when he tried to get an appointment at the U.S. embassy in Bucharest to apply for a temporary visa.
“Plan B was to fly to Mexico,” he recalled. He phoned Mr. Chorney to hatch the plan.
With his wife, Nina, and three children, he flew from Bucharest to Frankfurt and then to Mexico City, where the family spent a night before the last leg of the trip, to Tijuana.
Mr. Chorney met the Ukrainians at their hotel about 90 minutes after they checked in, put the weary family in his rental car and headed to the U.S. port of entry.
When they arrived at the booth, Mr. Chorney handed over his U.S. passport. “I got five refugees from Ukraine,” he told the officer, who directed them to another area for questioning.
Sensing their nervousness, Mr. Chorney said, another border officer tried to reassure them. “Calm down,” he told them. “You are in America.”
On a recent drizzly day, the Prisniaks’ youngest child, Tanya, 7, cradled a doll, humming and whispering in a tender tone. Their son, Timothy, 10, and eldest child, Anastasia, 13, were sprawled on the Chorneys’ sofa scrolling through a cellphone and chatting with the children staying in the camper.
After lunch, Mr. Chorney gathered the Prisniak family and drove to the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The family must apply for asylum to remain lawfully in the United States.
“I have to start all over again. I don’t know how it will work out,” said Mr. Prisniak, who had a construction business in Ukraine. “But I am happy we are in peace,” he said.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
