PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — “This has been a sleepless night,” said immigration attorney Igor Voloshen.
A Kyiv native now based in Huntingdon Valley, Voloshen has been bombarded with calls from clients in the Philadelphia area, concerned about family members who could be in harm’s way amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.
“I’m trying to keep people calm, tell them to stock up on food and obviously funds,” he said.
Some of the people Voloshen spoke to are concerned not only about their safety but also about their finances, “because of people’s rush on the banks.”
But with the American Embassy now essentially vacant, he said there’s not much that can be done right now to get emergency American visas for Ukrainians. Issues could also come for Ukrainians within American borders.
"What happens with all of those Ukrainians who came to the United States? A lot of them are my clients in this city...who applied for asylum based on many, many different reasons, not the least of which is religious persecution or political persecution who are from Ukraine and who came years ago, and their cases are now coming up for merit hearings in immigration courts across the country." he added.
"Will their cases be heard on their merits and will they be under certain circumstances, ordered removed from the United States and sent back to a war zone?"
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He believes we will see a refugee crisis on the Polish border.
"I know of multiple families who are trying very hard to leave Ukraine," Voloshen said. "Everybody's moving sort of west from the capital of Kyiv."
Of Voloshen’s many calls, he was able to connect with a former classmate who still lives there.
“She said that they were hiding in their basement,” he said. “They put all of their essential supplies there. They did hear the rumblings and the bombings, and they suspect the bombings and the missiles are hitting over the nearby airbase.”
Others are trying to gather supplies, like food and gasoline, or attempting to travel anywhere west of the country.
“I just had a conversation with a gentleman whose mother is in Kharkiv. He is just an absolute nerve-wreck,” Voloshen shared. The man warned his mother to leave the country last week, but “she wasn’t going to do it because she could not imagine that this was actually going to happen.
“They just simply were hesitant to believe that something could happen in the middle of the country, to the west of the capital, because why would [Putin] want to do that, right? They truly believed that this was only about disputed territories.
“Well, now we know it’s not.”