Ukrainians became the second largest group of refugees in the United States
As a child in 70-80's in Ukrainewhich at that time was part of the USSR, Galina Davidyuk often suffered from humiliation on the part of her classmates and teachers, because she was an evangelical. And her father was serving a sentence in prison for his religion.
According to Davidyuk, today there is “no religious persecution in Ukraine, but it is difficult to find work.” Typically, those seeking a better life in the United States have to wait several years for permission to move. But Davidyuk, her husband, seven children and daughter-in-law managed to get it quite quickly (in just two years), and they moved to Vancouver in May, the publication writes. New York Times.
Davidyuk and her family, who are Pentecostal, have joined the Ukrainian community in the United States, which has been growing rapidly even as Washington has suspended refugee admissions. They took advantage of an immigration program called the Lutenberg Amendment, created about 30 years ago to help those who suffered religious persecution in the USSR as the Soviet Communist Party punished religious groups it could not control.
Now in Ukraine there is much more freedom of religion, but people from the former Soviet republics still enjoy the advantage of this program when they apply for immigration to the United States, because the States have not yet canceled this program.
“In a world where people are persecuted for many reasons, refugee programs should not favor any one category of people, but should prioritize the most vulnerable groups in dire need of resettlement,” said the organization’s refugee director Human Rights Watch Bill Farlik.
According to him, the Lutenberg Amendment is a “Cold War anachronism.”
During the 10 months of the current fiscal year, about 4 thousands of refugees from Ukraine received permission to resettle in the United States under this program.
For comparison, for the entire 2016 year, 2543 Ukrainians received refugee status, and 4 a year ago there were only 227 in general.
Before 2017, they were quantitatively ahead of immigrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Myanmar. But since 1 in May, when the Donald Trump administration began to restrict the flow of refugees, people from Ukraine became the second largest group of immigrants after Congolese.
Recall President Donald Trump imposed a ban for entry into the United States for citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries (Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen) for 90 days and for 120 days suspended the reception program for refugees.
Translation of the article prepared the edition “Mirror of the week".
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