Last fall, HV1 shared the story of a group of volunteers called Plutarch for Refugees who raised funds to sponsor several families who had fled Afghanistan in search of a safe place to resettle, in a rural hamlet located between New Paltz and Lloyd (https://tinyurl.com/4febkdrw). The arrangements were made through Welcome Corps, a project of the US Department of State’s US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). In the wake of the November 2024 election, the future of two families soon expected to arrive in our region was in doubt.
The new occupant of the White House lost no time in shutting down the resettlement program. Among the executive orders signed by Donald Trump on January 20 was “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program,” under which refugee travel to the US and all USRAP refugee case processing activities were suspended until further notice. That included intake of new applications for the Welcome Corps, as well as processing of all active or previously submitted applications.
The executive order specified that the new policy would be reconsidered by the president at 90-day intervals, based on reports from the Secretary of Homeland Security and Secretary of State “regarding whether resumption of entry of refugees into the United States under the USRAP would be in the interests of the United States.” The likelihood of either cabinet member attempting to gainsay the opinion of their boss seems vanishingly small. One is left wondering at the cynical irony of complaints about “illegals” at a time when refugees’ and immigrants’ limited existing pathways to legal asylum, citizenship or residency are being shut down one by one.
Reports are surfacing of refugee families from many lands being turned away at US ports of entry, having already spent whatever funds they could scrape together on travel expenses. Among the lucky ones who were already here when all this started happening are a Ukrainian family currently living in Saugerties: Oleksandr (Sasha) and Anna Herasymeniuk and their 7-year-old daughter Vira, who arrived in the US last May. Anna’s mother, Oksana Kostiuk, joined them in November; according to Anna, “She got the last plane to the US.”
It was through Welcome Connect that the Herasymeniuk family found a safe refuge here in Ulster County. Their sponsor, a Saugerties homeowner named Mike McIsaac, found himself with plenty of extra space on his hands in February 2022: His marriage had broken up and his daughter and son moved out to pursue a job opportunity and college. In a brief period of time, “A lot of stuff happened,” he says. And then he watched the news reports of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. “I’ve always hated war,” he relates. “So, I started asking myself, ‘What can I do?’”
Not long thereafter, McIsaac was laid off from his job; so, when he heard about the launch of Welcome Connect in January 2023, he wasn’t in a financial position to become a sponsor. But he thought about it a lot. “Then, on the second anniversary of the invasion, I received a new job offer. It felt like a sign,” he wrote in a recent letter to the editor of this publication. “I revisited the Welcome Connect website and began the process of becoming a sponsor.”
Once he’d made the decision, it all came together very fast. “I joined, and five minutes later, I got a refugee family request,” McIsaac tells HV1 in an interview at his home, which he now shares with that same Ukrainian family. Many more responses followed, but he decided to go with “First come, first served.” Less than three months later, he was meeting the Herasymeniuks at JFK Airport.
The family had lived in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, not far from the Polish border. Thus, it was not among the first places in the country to be assaulted by Russian troops. But the family was already intimate with the effects of war. Sasha, who worked in the radio communications field, was a member of the National Guard for 17 years, deployed three times in the Donbas region beginning in 2014. He suffered several concussions in battle and still endures insomnia and terrible nightmares. His PTSD diagnosis qualified him for “military disabled” status and eventual permission to emigrate.
Anna, for her part, lost her first husband to war, “killed by Russians.” She gave up her original career as an editor and journalist to work for a social services organization that assisted disabled military members. That’s how she met and married Sasha.
Although their home was far from the main battlefront, the collateral effects of the war were already being felt in Lviv. With so many resources focused in the eastern part of the country, crime and corruption went unchecked. Young men were being forcibly conscripted. “Hospitals were not admitting people, and there were people with mental illnesses on the streets,” Anna says.
Stories filtered back to the family about friends and relatives who had died or experienced horrors at the hands of Russian troops. Ukrainian war orphans near the eastern borders were being kidnapped and rehomed with Russian families. For a grim, realistic picture of wartime life there, Sasha recommends that Americans watch the Oscar-winning Frontline PBS documentary 20 Days in Mariupol (www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvAyykRvPBo). “There are no safe places in Ukraine,” he says.
When Vira was 4, her mother took her for a walk in a Lviv park, only to witness a violent incident that convinced Anna that it was time to get out of the country. It only took a week for Sasha to obtain permission. “The shooting started not long afterward,” Anna says.
Their first move was to Poland, where they spoke a little of the language and quickly learned more in order to find work. But Vira, who had previously had speech delay issues, suddenly “started to talk in English” after exposure to American cartoons on Polish television. Moving to America began to seem like a good idea – or “destiny,” as Anna likes to put it.
Welcome Connect brought McIsaac and the Herasymeniuks together in May 2024, but Vira’s grandmother Oksana had been reluctant to leave her home city – until it became too dangerous a place to live. “The shooting got worse and worse,” Anna recounts. “On September 4, which was the beginning of the school year, there was horrible shooting in Lviv. They destroyed the kindergarten of my daughter. A piece of shrapnel came through my mom’s window, and she got a concussion.” Oksana finally agreed to emigrate, and joined the rest of her family in Saugerties in November.
McIsaac turned over the downstairs floor of his home to the Herasymeniuks, rent-free, and for the first couple of months they shared meals “like a family,” he says. Then Sasha and Anna both found jobs, and their schedules no longer converged. Under the terms of the Welcome Connect sponsorship agreement, enough money is raised from donors to support a newly arrived family for the first three months. After that, adult refugees are expected to work.
Despite speaking no English at all upon arrival, Sasha found a full-time job almost immediately after posting his availability on Facebook. He’s now working long days splicing fiber-optic Internet cable for the company Planet Networks, at times having to commute to and from its New Jersey headquarters.
Anna bought a car and is learning to drive. She started volunteering for afterschool programs at the Boys and Girls Club in Saugerties and is now working there part-time as a counselor. She says she loves the people there, the sense of being in a supportive community, and is enjoying being able to help others, despite the pay being minimal. “If destiny helped me, I should give back,” she explains. “I’m excited to have such people around me.”
Vira was enrolled in school right away, although the school year was nearly over. An exuberant child, she has picked up English the fastest of any in her family, is taking dance classes and has made plenty of friends. “They’re all her sisters,” says Anna. “My daughter feels like it’s home here.” Vira’s favorite toy is a souvenir of her native land: a stuffed toy dog representing Patron, the bomb-sniffing Jack Russell terrier who received a presidential medal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The family also has a pet Canadian sphynx cat who accompanied them on their travels, facetiously named Fluffy.
Considering the current state of US politics, the Herasymeniuks’ quest for asylum is not yet assured of success. Their official “class of admission” is still listed as Ukrainian Humanitarian Parolees (UHP), but the Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) program under which it was established was paused by Trump on January 28. Persons classified as UHP are being urged to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or asylum: costly legal processes that can take years to resolve. Sasha says that it costs $5,000 per person just to have a lawyer prepare the case.
As war refugees, Sasha and Anna are adamant that they’re not going anywhere, other than wanting to find their own house. “We can’t sit all the time on Michael’s shoulders,” Anna says. “I wouldn’t go back to Ukraine because I’m scared for my daughter. If I didn’t have kids, I would go back and fight with the military. We both would.” She smiles. “But there are no Russians here.”
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