Is Expediting Ukrainian Refugees’ Migration Fair to Others?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Those fleeing war and depression have often then also had to face long immigration battles when trying to seek refuge in the United States. Uniting for Ukraine is a private refugees sponsorship program that the Biden administration created in response to Putin’s war. Bypassing the conventional admission system, refugees can be settled within weeks. George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin sponsored Ukrainian refugees under this program and he discusses how this model can revolutionize U.S. immigration. He talks with Hari Sreenivasan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Professor Ilya Somin, thanks so much for joining us. First, let me start with kind of a basic question. You and your wife sponsored a family of three from the Ukraine. Why?

ILYA SOMIN, AUTHOR, “FREE TO MOVE” AND LAW PROFESSOR, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY: I guess for two reasons. One is, I have long been involved in immigration issues and advocated for freer migration rights in both academic and popular writings. And second, I’m originally from Russia, I’m an immigrant myself. And perhaps more importantly, for present purposes, I speak Russian and I am familiar with Ukraine and obviously many Ukrainians, including the ones we sponsored. I also speak Russian, so I thought that I would be in an especially good position to be a sponsor in this program. Though I should emphasize, you don’t have to speak Russian or be from Russia or be from Ukraine for that matter to participate.

SREENIVASAN: So, for people who might be unfamiliar with it, tell me a little bit about the program and how it worked.

SOMIN: When the Russian invasion started in February of last year, there was a massive refugee crisis. I was told some 7 million people have fled Ukraine. In response, the Biden administration created the Uniting for Ukraine program, where if an American citizen or permanent resident agrees to sponsor a group of Ukrainians, or one or two people, or however many it is. Then they can enter the country quickly and have the right to live and work here for up to two years, a period perhaps that may be extended in the future. And unlike the traditional refugee system, which is more them than extremely slow and can take years to process applicants, here you can get permission for the people to enter within just a few days after the sponsor files the paperwork. In our case, only nine days after I filed it.

SREENIVASAN: That’s amazing. I mean, nine days of anything related to the word immigration seems a miracle. So, I mean, what is that — what was that process like? Did someone call you? Try to vet you?

SOMIN: Sure. So, I started by going to a website called welcome.us, which is a private organization where if you want to be a sponsor, you can set up a profile. And then, Ukrainians who want to come, they have profiles of their own and they can contact you on it, almost like a dating website. Though I should emphasize that dating is not the purpose of this institution.

SREENIVASAN: Right.

SOMIN: And within a couple of days, after my wife and I set up our profile, we were contacted by the Hasanam (ph) family. I communicated with them. We established that there needs an expectations were a good match for ours. And then, I filed the paperwork at the USCIS website, the federal government immigration in industry.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

SOMIN: There is a form called I-134A that you have to file, one for each of the three people. It’s a somewhat complicated form. Nonetheless, I was able to fill out all the forms and file them within a few hours and I got an answer back from the website, from the USCIS within nine days.

SREENIVASAN: So, tell me a little bit about this family. I mean, what was their situation? What did that they say that they were facing in Ukraine?

SOMIN: So, the two of them are from the town of Irpin, in Kyiv — near Kyiv. And it was occupied early in the war by the Russian forces where, when they occupied it, there is, as elsewhere in the cane, occupied by Russia great brutality, and hundreds of civilians were killed. They managed to escape Irpin just before the Russian troops entered. They, nonetheless, face bombing and saw missile strikes and the like. Many of their family members were either trapped behind Russian lines or in some cases, in prison or deported in the way, as were many people that they knew. And when the they initially fled, Ruswan (ph), the husband, he stayed in Western Ukraine, whereas Maya (ph), his wife, and their two-year-old daughter found temporary refuge in Spain because the European Union opened their borders. However, overtime, they recognize that even after the Ukrainian forces recaptured Irpin, which they did later in the fighting, that normal life there would be almost impossible and they also recognize, for various reasons, that it would not be possible for them to stay in Spain permanently, including the fact that Spain, because of its labor policies, has significant limits on child opportunities in that country and there are other issues as well. So, they heard about the Uniting for Ukraine Program from friends of theirs who were previous participants and were already in the U.S. And then, they got on to the same We-Connect website that I mentioned earlier and they found us.

SREENIVASAN: Are you talking to them on a daily basis? I mean, how much are you responsible for them, so to speak?

SOMIN: In our case, they arrived in Northern Virginia, where we live, and we — they spent a few days with us and then, they moved on as they had previously planned their final destination in Florida. I do communicate with them and I help them with various annoying bureaucratic problems that inevitably come up when you move to a whole new country and start a whole new life. And — but the exact extent to which the sponsor does that is to a large extent up to the sponsor working with the sponsoree family. There aren’t really precise regulations and guidelines saying, you must do precisely X, Y and Z.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

SOMIN: And there shouldn’t be because each situation is somewhat different and also, each family has their own needs. And similarly, sponsors can vary in terms of what they are able to do.

SREENIVASAN: You mentioned you are an immigrant to this country, you speak Russian. What were the circumstances that led you here?

SOMIN: In the 1970s, the U.S. had a program for letting in people from persecuted minorities in the Soviet Union. One of them was the Jews of which group I am the member. And my parents were able to leave the Soviet Union entered the U.S. under that refugee program, and we’re obviously very happy about that and obviously, that experience is one of the things that influenced my interest in being involved in the Uniting for Ukraine program today.

SREENIVASAN: I should point out that you are kind of not the average bear here. I mean, you are a professor of law. You cover migration policy. I mean, given your background, how complicated was this? How easy was this?

SOMIN: I totally understand that I’m a lawyer and I have some advantages that a normal person might not enjoy and normal people probably have less tolerance for bureaucracy and forms than lawyers do. Nonetheless, we now have close to 100,000 Ukrainians enter the country through this program just since April of last year. And the vast majority of the sponsors who helped them enter, I think, are probably not lawyers or migration policy experts. Soi, I won’t lie and I do recognize that the forms are more complicated than they should be and there are some aspects of the process that are annoying. I have advocated for trying to fix that. But, by the standards of federal government bureaucracy, we should admit that we are pretty well in this respect, this is much easier than most immigration paperwork and documentation and, most importantly, USCIS actually acts swiftly in response to this as opposed to a lot of immigration related issues, which it can literally take years for them to process things.

SREENIVASAN: You are describing a relatively swift process, compare that to the refugee process of getting in the United States if you are from pretty much any other country than the Ukraine right now.

SOMIN: So, I would say, just recently, actually, a system similar to Uniting for Ukraine has been extended to the four Latin American countries, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua. The president actually announced that just a few days ago. So, it’s no longer limited to just Ukraine. But I have advocated in my writings to extend this to people fleeing poverty, oppression and injustice and war all over the world, not just residents two those now five countries. But I think to the extent that we see a double standard here, the solution is leveling up to make this more available to more people rather than say that, you know, because of political realities, we can’t make it available to everybody all at once, then we should make it available to nobody.

SREENIVASAN: So, put this in perspective for us. How many people have come to you in the United States through this program versus refugees being led in by the rest of the world?

SOMIN: In the fiscal year 2022, the traditional refugee system let in only about 25,000 people from anywhere in the world combined, that’s willed by historical standards, thought it was still a bit higher than the 11, 000 the previous year. By contrast under Uniting for Ukraine since April of last year on through December, we have had close to 100,000 people come in and probably another 30,000 or 40,000 have already been authorized and they have likely been more since than the last few weeks that the official data hasn’t yet captured. So, this program works much faster and more effectively than the traditional refugee system. Though unlike the traditional refugee system, it doesn’t grant the participants permanent residency. And under the current rules, they only get to stay for up to two years. Though I hope overtime, that will be extended.

SREENIVASAN: I can hear the echoes of the people who wouldn’t have a problem with this and they say, first of all, what about everyone that’s been waiting in line for years and years to have the same opportunity to enter the United States, even on a temporary basis, much less a permanent one? How fair is that?

SOMIN: I think the answer, as I said before, is that we should be trying to level up rather than level down. In principle, I believe we should be open to all those fleeing poverty, oppression and war, not just those from particular countries. And we should not view that as some kind of lost in our part or charity but rather as a win-win because these people get to live in greater freedom and prosperity. And in return, they contribute to our economy, to our society, the scientific innovation and so forth. But I would also say that we cannot let the best be the enemy of the good. That it for political reasons it is not possible to do everything at once, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something. As Ronald Reagan once said, if you can’t get 100 percent of what you want, you should at least be willing to get 80 percent or even 50 or 20 percent and try to come back and get the rest later.

SREENIVASAN: What about the concerns at the speed and efficiency of this program, saying, hey, if we are letting in 100,000 people as quickly as we have, we probably did not apply the same level of vetting to these people to come into the United States as we do with those 25,000 refugees from every other part of the world? Are we in any greater danger?

SOMIN: So, if you look at the history of emigration from Ukraine, Russia and other related countries, and for that matter, for around the world, the rate of criminality, terrorism and other similar problems is actually lower than with native born Americans, and that is true even for populations where the amount of vetting done was very low. So, obviously, if you are doing something like giving people access to classified information, then, you know, you want to have a significant level of screening, regardless of where they come from, frankly. On the other hand, if all you’re doing it is letting them participate in the legal economy and seek jobs and the like, then I don’t think some great vetting is necessary to allow, for example, for a person to become a hairdresser in the U.S., as one of our sponsorees, that’s what she does for a living. She’s a hairdresser. So, I don’t think that is quite the same thing as working in the Pentagon and handling classified information and the like.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

SOMIN: And similarly, while in any large group of people, there’s always a risk that somebody might be a criminal or dangerous in some way. The rate of this risk is actually lower, as I said before, that it is for native born Americans. And therefore, we don’t need some kind of extraordinary vetting to deal with that for ordinary law enforcement should suffice.

SREENIVASAN: Could a program, like the one you’re participating in now, be challenged in court?

SOMIN: So, while a program like this could be challenged in court potentially, I think it is well within the wording of the statute because the president could just simply say, the U.S. interest at stake is that we are supporting Ukraine against the geopolitical rival. In addition, there’s an interest in relieving people from the danger of war and severe oppression from our geopolitical enemies. There are also geopolitical advantages to us taking in the Ukrainians in this situation because, for — in pretty obvious ways, it strengthens our position in the international war of ideas against dictators like Putin. So, while one can imagine legal challenges, it’s unlikely that they would succeed, at least not based on the wording of the statute in question. I do recognize concerns, and I’ve written about it myself, that, you know, this statute if interpreted broadly as, by the way it was, under the Trump administration, would give the president vast unilateral power over immigration, perhaps too much. You know, that raises some questions, but, at least, under the current interpretation of the statute by the courts, it should be feasible to do this program and even to extend it to some other countries as it’s recently been done.

SREENIVASAN: I wonder about the role of race or R xenophobia (ph) in constructing any kind of a holistic national immigration policy. It is an incredibly politicized issue here and when it’s advantageous to a particular politician or a party, they are on X side of it, and when it’s disadvantageous, there and Y side of it. But when you think about the fact there are lives at stake and dangers that those human beings are facing in other countries, how should we proceed with, say, scaling a program like this up as you are advocating for?

SOMIN: The racial and ethnic bias has played a significant role in American immigration policy ever since we’ve had federal government immigration restrictions all the way back to the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 19th century. We cannot immediately eliminate all of these biases. That said, obviously, I think society is on the whole more opposed to racism now than it was 50 or 100 years ago, to say nothing of the 19th century. And the administration has, in fact, extended this policy now to people fleeing foreign countries where most of those people are not white or at least not white as Americans understand that term. Though, I think we can perceive incrementally and I think we can learn lessons from the domestic civil rights struggle against racial and ethnic bias where, ultimately, progress was made because more and more people recognize that distinctions of race and ethnicity are ultimately arbitrary, where you are allowed to live, what sort of work you are allowed to do should not depend on whether you are white or black or Hispanic or Asian or whatnot. And if that is true domestically, it should be true in immigration policy as well.

SREENIVASAN: So, what is this family planning to do after their two years are up?

SOMIN: So, that is a great question and I don’t think that they know that with certainty. And sadly, it also depends on what the federal government decides and that if we end up with the situation that when the two years are up, people lose their status and they’re subject to deportation, that would be a very bad thing, and even if most were not actually deported, it would be hard for them to work in the legal economy, given that they would no longer have legal work permits.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

SOMIN: My hope is that either the president, or better still, Congress would give them some kind of permanent status or, at the very least, extend the timeframe the president could, if he wanted to, unilaterally make the two years or every five years or 10 years or potentially more, that would be subject, perhaps, to a reversal by a future president, but it would be politically harder for that future individual to reverse an existing policy than it would to just simply let the existing two years run out.

SREENIVASAN: Professor Ilya Somin, thanks so much for joining us.

SOMIN: Thank you for having me.