OYSTER BAY, N.Y. (WCBS 880) — A Long Island family is fighting to get their relatives who fled Ukraine to escape the war to stay with them in the United States.
Newlyweds Kseniia and Oleksandr Isaienko grabbed their dog and left their home in Odesa with basically the clothes on their backs after Russia invaded Ukraine.
They traveled in their Mini Cooper, escaping to Italy, where a kind stranger has taken them in.
"We left our home because in the morning there was a bomb attack near our apartment and we took some documents, no stuff, and we needed to go," 28-year-old Kseniia Isaienko told WCBS 880's Sophia Hall on Monday.
She was hoping to stay with her family in Oyster Bay until it is safe to return back to their home in Ukraine, but the couple's tourist visas were denied.
"We don't want to live in U.S., we hope to go back home to Ukraine, we just need a visa just to stay a few months," Isaienko said.
Her sister is devastated and heartbroken.
"Our family was absolutely sure that they will be approved and they will come here and then we'll be together," said Isaienko's sister, Jenya Semenkova, who lives in Oyster Bay with her husband and her mother.
Semenkova said when she sits down for dinner with her family, all she thinks about is her sister and her sister's husband.
"You can't enjoy the dinner every night anymore because you sit down at the dinner table and all you're thinking is, 'Oh, here we are, having a nice meal, what is my sister doing?'" Semenkova said.
Congressman Tom Suozzi, who is running for governor, said he wrote to President Joe Biden last week for help to get families like Isaienko and Semenkova reunited in the United States.
"This is a terrible quirk in the law that many people, thousands of people, probably tens of thousands of people, are caught up in," said Suozzi. "The law is such that you have to show that you have a place to go home to. They can't demonstrate that because they don't know what's going to happen to their home. They don't know what's happened to their city."
In his letter to the president, Suozzi asked the administration to consider specific policy measures to help Ukrainian refugees obtain temporary tourist visas.
"You can understand the provisions of the law and why they were done originally, but now these families are caught up in this," Suozzi said. "I think most Americans would agree, most human beings would agree, most people would agree that this family wants to help their family to come live with them."
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