Thousands of Americans want to become sponsors of Ukrainian refugees

More than 45,000 Americans have applied to sponsor Ukrainian refugees in the United States through the largest private sponsorship program for refugees in decades. This writes CBS News.

On Wednesday, June 1, more than 6,500 Ukrainians arrived in the United States under the Unity for Ukraine program, which began on April 25. Representatives of the US immigration service also gave a visa to another 27,000 Ukrainians identified by American sponsors.

The number of applications and approved cases indicates that the program could quickly become the largest formal private refugee sponsorship initiative in US history. It could eclipse a program shut down in the 1990s that allowed Americans to fund the resettlement of 16,000 refugees over six years.

In the Uniting for Ukraine program, the US government decided not to use the traditional system of accepting refugees. This time, ordinary Americans and various organizations - volunteers, schools, universities, and so on - began to attract ordinary Americans to help the arrivals.

Unlike Canada and a number of European countries, the US has so far not accepted private sponsorship of refugees. But the Biden administration plans to create a pilot private sponsorship program for all refugees by the end of 2022.

Approximately 7,300, or 15% of Americans who applied to sponsor Ukrainians, live in New York, according to statistics from the Department of Homeland Security. Other regions with the most potential sponsors are Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Miami, Washington, Sacramento, Portland and Cleveland.

More than 6.5 million Ukrainians became refugees and left for other countries. Such figures were announced on May 23 at the UN. The State Border Service of Ukraine reports about 7.5 million. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, about 2 million 200 thousand citizens have already returned to Ukraine. Since May 10, border guards have recorded the prevalence of entry into Ukraine over exit.