Letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security - Norton Writes DHS to Express Concern with Racially Disparate Impact of Uniting for Ukraine Program

Letter

Dear Secretary Mayorkas:

While we applaud the administration's establishment of a humanitarian parole program for Ukraine, Uniting for Ukraine, we write to express our concern with the program's citizenship requirement, which restricts entry from some who are fleeing Russia's invasion.

As of June 1, 2022, approximately 6.98 million refugees have left Ukraine since the invasion.[1] This includes tens of thousands of third-country nationals and stateless persons who are not immediate family members of Ukrainian citizens but who had made Ukraine their home.[2] Many of these third-country nationals are refugees who had resettled in Ukraine after escaping conflict or persecution in their home countries.[3] Despite the universal outcry against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the United Nation's International Organization for Migration received verified reports of discrimination, violence and xenophobia against third-country nationals fleeing Ukraine and seeking entry to neighboring European countries.[4]

Uniting for Ukraine has a racially disparate impact by imposing a citizenship requirement for eligibility. Only Ukrainian citizens and their non-Ukrainian immediate family members may have their application fees and consular processing waived under this program.[5] Third-country nationals such as those from Africa and the Middle East who are fleeing Ukraine must instead wait in limbo and danger while their refugee applications are processed through a backlogged U.S. refugee admission program.

In keeping with the mandate of Executive Order 13985 to recognize and redress inequities in agency policy and programs that serve as barriers to equal opportunity, we ask that you remove the citizenship requirement from Uniting for Ukraine.

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