ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Following the outbreak of conflict in Ukraine in 2022, hundreds of people sought refuge in Alaska. Last week in Juneau, the Catholic Social Programs Alaska Office of Refugees informed lawmakers that Alaska’s refugee programs have undergone significant changes.
“In the last two years refugee services hitting a peak of resettlement that we have never seen before,” Issa Spatrisano, the state’s refugee coordinator for CSS, said at a meeting with lawmakers.
According to Spatrisano, the increase is due to the more than 1,000 Ukrainians who moved to Alaska once the war broke out outside. Of the 917 cases her department is now handling, 619 are part of Ukrainian humanitarian parole. A program that allows refugees to remain in Alaska for up to two years. Refugees and close family members can reapply after two years by completing papers and waivers.
Zori Opanasevych, a former Ukrainian refugee, arrived in the United States in the 1990s when she was just seven years old.
“I realized I needed to do something,” Opanasevych remarked. “That’s how it helped me cope with the pain of doing something about it.”
Opanasevych, who is now the program director for the Ukraine Relief Program, stated that she has assisted over 1,000 Ukrainians in coming to Alaska in the last two years. During the early part of the year, she stated that she would make three trips to the airport per week, bringing roughly 50 Ukrainians to Alaska each.
Opanasevych now says she welcomes approximately 20 Ukrainians to Alaska each week. The need for assistance, she stated, remained strong.
“There’s people who said, ‘I’ll stay there, wait it out,’ but now they’re saying, ‘I can’t,'” Opanasevych spoke. ‘I can’t take the sirens anymore. I can’t live like this. Or, ‘I really lost everything at this point… I could make it through, but now I need someone else to assist me get out of here.'”