Ukrainian Refugees Need More Than Money From US
In a rare display of bipartisanship last week, U.S. lawmakers reached an agreement on a government spending bill that will include $4 billion in humanitarian aid to help the two million people who have fled Ukraine from the Russian invasion. It’s a start, but over the long haul, these refugees will need far more from the United States to rebuild their lives.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) believes this could be the largest refugee crisis to hit Europe this century. And while President Biden has expressed strong words of support for the people of Ukraine, the U.S. has made no decision as to whether America will open its doors to the increasing number of people who have nowhere to live and nowhere to go.
The support from Ukraine’s neighboring countries has been remarkable. Poland has welcomed nearly one million people. Hungary, historically known for rejecting migrants from entering the country, has accepted them. Germany has opened its borders. France, Ireland, United Kingdom, Romania, and Czech Republic have too.
The U.S. has allowed Ukrainians who arrived to America prior to March 1st to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). But that isn’t enough to make a meaningful impact. Millions left with just the shirts on their backs — and continue to leave the country in droves to save their lives. We can, we must, do more.
Our silence on accepting Ukrainian refugees is a departure from the position the U.S. took just six months ago, when images of U.S. planes overrun with thousands of men, women and children leaving Afghanistan made headlines around the world. Seven people died trying to board U.S. flights to escape unspeakable hardship and suffering as the Taliban closed in to take control of their native homeland.
Most will agree a more thoughtful exit strategy might have avoided the chaos and loss of life that occurred at the Afghanistan airport that day. But few criticized what the U.S. was trying to do in that moment. We were supporting an allied community that desperately needed our help.
Because that’s what America does.
The actions we took in Afghanistan represented the largest evacuation of refugees in military history — a remarkable feat given the Trump administration’s shuttering of resettlement offices that made it infinitely harder for the U.S. to grant asylum to people from other countries. Despite that we rescued 75,000 Afghans and brought them to America. Some took jobs at the very resettlement agencies that are now being reactivated to manage the influx of their displaced countrymen. We stood with the Afghan people and saved thousands who would have faced certain death or unimaginable abuse at the hands of the Taliban had they been left behind.
Today the U.S. finds itself in a similar situation — yet we have given little indication if we will open our borders and provide safe harbor to millions of Ukrainians who are homeless. Vladimir Putin has made it clear he has no intention of stopping his war. Russian attacks on civilians have been indiscriminate — including a kindergarten destroyed by Putin’s tanks. Over four hundred innocent people have died, including children as young as 18 months old. 800 have been wounded. More and more people will flee and need sustained support — for years — to get them back on their feet.
We have work to do to rebuild the infrastructure President Trump dismantled to welcome refugee populations. But we can’t let that work stop us from doing what must be done now in this moment to help Ukrainian refugees in their hour of tremendous need.
Half of the two million people who have fled the Russian invasion to date are children. Some experts predict the number of refugees will skyrocket to 10 million over the next several months and years. If we truly stand with Ukraine, we must join our allies and open our doors to them.
Doing so will send a message to the world that we stand for goodness, freedom and light. And it will restore America’s role as a beacon of hope for those in search of a better life.
Lyndon Haviland, DrPH, MPH, is a distinguished scholar at the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy.
