The Biden administration “is preparing to roll out a program intended for Ukrainian refugees that would expedite the process for those trying to come to the United States, according to two administration officials,” CNN reported on April 12.

The new program “is expected to help people interested in coming to the US and allow them to stay in the country temporarily. According to one administration official, individuals would need to have a sponsorship application filled out on their behalf by someone in the US in order to come to the country. Details of the plan are still being finalized,” wrote Kevin Liptak and Priscilla Alvarez in a story posted on CNN’s website.

In a recent letter to President Biden, a bipartisan group of 65 House members urged the president to take a number of actions to help Ukrainians seeking refuge in the U.S. in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We appreciate the decision on March 3, 2022 to announce Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Ukrainian nationals physically present in the United States as of March 1, 2022, so that no Ukrainian needs to return immediately to a country under siege while Russia advances a military campaign that indiscriminately attacks civilians and military targets alike,” the lawmakers said in the letter.

“As the conflict continues, we urge you to modify the physical presence eligibility date for TPS from March 1st to the publication date of the forthcoming Federal Register notice, thereby making any Ukrainian in the United States on that date eligible for Temporary Protected Status,” they said. “This technical update could provide significant relief for Ukrainians who recently entered, as they cannot—and should not—return to a war zone right now. It will also allow these Ukrainians to work and attend school, contribute economically to the United States and support themselves, while they await the end of this war.”

The House members said that they also welcome the Administration’s announcement that the United States will accept up to 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing harm through “the full range of legal pathways,” including the refugee admissions and regular immigration processes, as well as through humanitarian parole.

“In concert with this announcement, we also recommend you utilize existing administrative options to improve efficient processing for Ukrainians outside of the United States who already qualify for immigration benefits.” the lawmakers told Biden.

“We encourage the Administration to further provide additional resources to U.S. embassy personnel across Europe who are processing immigrant visa applications for eligible Ukrainians, including immediate family members of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.”

The lawmakers said that they have been alerted to the need for more coordination between the National Visa Center and Department of State (specifically U.S. Embassies). 

Click here for the April 6 letter.

Oliwia Dabrowska, the the little girl in the red coat walking through the Krakow Ghetto in Schindler’s List is helping refugees fleeing Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

“Almost 30 years after the film was released, and decades since the horrors of the Holocaust, Oliwia is now echoing the actions of the film’s hero, Oskar Schindler, as she helps people escape from the devastation in Ukraine,” writes Rachel O’Connor in the UK’s Metro.

In March, she “shared an artist’s rendering of her iconic scene in the film with her coat color changed from red to blue to represent Ukraine’s blue and yellow flag, which she also shared as part of the post” on Instagram, reports Deadline’s Tom Tapp.

“She was always the symbol of hope,” wrote Dabrowska. “Let her be it again.”

Two Harvard University freshmen have launched a website “designed to connect people fleeing Ukraine to those in safer countries willing to take them in — and it’s generating offers of help and housing worldwide,” reports Rodrique Ngowi in the Denver Post.

Marco Burstein and Avi Schiffmann used their coding skills to create UkraineTakeShelter.com.

More than 18,000 prospective hosts “have signed up on the site to offer assistance to refugees seeking matches with hosts in their preferred or convenient locations,” Ngowi reports in the article.

Make no mistake about it. The flood of refugees from Ukraine as a result of Russia’s invasion is part of a broader plan by Vladimir Putin to split the Western Alliance.

“Refugees are not a design flaw of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine,” the New York Times states in a April 1, 2022 editorial, “Putin Knows What He’s Doing With Ukraine’s Refugees. This Is the World’s Big Test.”

“Indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian infrastructure is part of a broader strategy to demoralize the civilian population and drive residents into neighboring countries, where their presence can be destabilizing,” the editorial goes on to say, noting that in 2021, Aleksandr Lukashenko, the ruler of Belarus, “apparently manufactured a crisis by encouraging migrants to cross into Poland.”

All of this highlights the need to support countries that are hosting refugees, thus making this tactic of trying to weaponize refugees less effective, the editorial notes.

Putin “has weaponized refugees (particularly women, children, the elderly and infirm) as a potent way to destabilize neighboring nations — in this case, Poland, Romania, Moldova and, eventually, other Western European countries,” wrote Mark C. Poznansky, Michael V. Callahan and Jacki A Hart in a recent opinion piece in the Hill newspaper.

And this is not the first time Putin has been accused of weaponizing refugees.

U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, the supreme allied commander in Europe for the 28-member military alliance NATO in 2016 told a Senate hearing that Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad were weaponizing the region’s refugee crisis and using it to undermine Europe’s security and unity.

In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, Alexander Betts argues that now is the time for Europe to reset how it treats refugees in the wake of the exodus of Ukrainians fleeing their country after Russia’s invasion.

“The discrepancy in the treatment of refugee populations is contrary to the spirit of international refugee law, which upholds the right of refugees to seek asylum anywhere in the world without discrimination,” writes Betts.

Forced displacement “will be a defining challenge of the twenty-first century everywhere. That reality has profound implications for how Europe aids refugees,” writes Betts, who is a s Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs at the University of Oxford and author of The Wealth of Refugees: How Displaced People Can Build Economies.

“The continent can no longer act just as a distant donor of humanitarian and development aid; now, it must develop the capacity to welcome large numbers of refugees, no matter where they are from.”

Click here for his column.

The number of people fleeing the war in Ukraine has exceeded four million, the United Nations said Wednesday, “surpassing the refugee count the organization predicted for the entire war in just under five weeks,” the Wall Street Journal reported on March 30.

“That number exceeds the worst-case predictions made at the start of the war,” wrote Bassam Hatoum and Jamey Keaten of the Associated Press.

Half of the refugees from Ukraine are children, according to UNHCR and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, they reported.

“The exodus, staggering in its scale and speed, has turned into the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II,” noted Ellen Francis of the Washington Post.

President Biden on March 26 met with Ukrainian refugees “who have fled to Poland in recent weeks, getting a firsthand look at the humanitarian crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the Hill reported.

Biden “held hands with parents and gave them hugs during the stop at a soccer stadium where refugees go to obtain a Polish identification number that gives them access to social services such as health care and schools,” the Associated Press noted.

Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times

“I’ve been to an awful lot of places like this with a lot of refugee camps in my life. And what I — what I never — I’m always surprised by is the depth and strength of the human spirit. I mean it sincerely. And it’s incredible. It’s incredible,” the President said after meeting with the refugees.

The White House on March 24 said that it would welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainians and others “fleeing Russia’s aggression through the full range of legal pathways, including the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.”

The White House said in a fact sheet that in particular, “we are working to expand and develop new programs with a focus on welcoming Ukrainians who have family members in the United States. The United States and the European Union are also coordinating closely to ensure that these efforts, and other forms of humanitarian admission or transfers, are complementary and provide much-needed support to Ukraine’s neighbors.”

“While most displaced Ukrainians want to stay in Europe, the U.S. government expects to use its refugee admission program as well as the parole system and immigrant and non-immigrant visas to bring in Ukrainians,” NPR reported, citing a senior Biden Administration official.

Along with accepting the up to 100,000 refugees, the White House also said that Thursday that it would donate $1 billion to help European countries handle a surge of migrants fleeing Russia’s invasion, the New York Times reported.

“The announcement comes as countries facing an exodus of some three million refugees have sought assistance from the United States, which has been engaged in its own struggle to absorb thousands of refugees from the war in Afghanistan,: wrote New York Times reporters Miriam Jordan and Michael Shear.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on March 6. Over the last 10 days, 1.5 million people have fled the conflict.

The UNHCR has set up a webpage for donations to provide assistance to the refugees. Click here for additional details.