On Feb. 24, 2022, Kostiantyn Dmitriiev woke up at 5 a.m. to the sound of his phone ringing. It was his parents.
"Guys, it's started," his mother told him. "So you have to pack your belongings and get out of the town right here, right now."
Dmitriiev, a 27-year-old tech worker, and his wife, Kseniia, were at home in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Their apartment was about a 20-minute drive from the Russian border, which President Vladimir Putin's troops were now rapidly crossing. Tanks were rolling toward Kharkiv, and missiles were exploding at targets nearby.
The Dmitriievs didn't need the reminder to pack. Like many of their neighbors, they'd been expecting the invasion, so they had already bagged up their belongings and filled their car with gas. Now all that was left to do was to grab their luggage and their 2-year-old corgi, Micha, and go.
Braving traffic jams that stretched for miles, the couple made their way to Nova Vodolaha, a suburb of Kharkiv where Dmitriiev's parents lived, and then to Uzhhorod, one of the western-most cities in Ukraine. From there they eventually made it across the border to Poland, where they were able to stay with friends.
During that time, the Ukrainian tech company Dmitriiev worked for made him an offer: The company's chief technology officer lived in Philadelphia. If Dmitriiev and his wife could manage to immigrate to the United States, they could stay at the CTO's apartment, and Dmitriiev could work remotely from there.
"I thought, why not?" Dmitriiev said. "Right now we can do so. Let's do this."
The couple applied for what's called "humanitarian parole" under
But their troubles were far from over. Though they were now out of harm's way, the Dmitriievs were just beginning their long, difficult struggle to afford life in the United States — a struggle that ultimately burned through most of Dmitriiev's life savings.
"It is not the end of the story," Dmitriiev said. "I wouldn't say you just lose your savings. You lose everything, and you have to restart from scratch."
And the Dmitriievs are far from alone. Though many Ukrainian refugees — and immigrants of all nations — find physical safety in America, they also face overwhelming financial and bureaucratic obstacles. Just to begin making a living, they have to fill out large amounts of paperwork that take months to process. The same is often true of opening bank accounts, renting apartments or even getting SIM cards for cell phones.
In the meantime, life in the United States is expensive, and money that would go a long way in other countries doesn't last as long here.
"Unfortunately, our immigration system is very bureaucratic and broken in a lot of ways," said Jodi Ziesemer, director of the Immigration Protection Unit at the
Permission to live, but not to work
Uniting for Ukraine was launched in April 2022, two months after the war began. As he
By those measures, the program had succeeded beyond expectations. But during its first year in effect, it left out an important detail: Ukrainians allowed to live in the U.S. were not immediately allowed to work there. To get a job, refugees had to apply for a work authorization, which took several months to be approved. In some cases, Ziesemer said, it took up to a year.
The Biden administration eventually addressed this issue in November 2022,
The upshot is that many Ukrainians start life in America with no way to pay for it.
"That's sort of where the gap is," Ziesemer said. "The fact that we're sending status to people to enter the United States and not simultaneously processing documentation for them to actually begin their life here in the United States is a huge issue."
'Life isn't cheap'
In Dmitriiev's case, getting his work authorization took four months. Luckily, in the meantime he was able to keep working for his Ukrainian employer, but there were problems with that, too. For one thing, the company lost an important client Dmitriiev had been working with, making his position there tenuous.
"They had to cut down a team, which I was running," he said. "From then until now, I still have no other stable project to work on."
In addition, Ukraine's national bank was
The solution, in Dmitriiev's view, was to get an American job. But tech jobs were scarce in Philadelphia, so he and Kseniia decided to move to New York.
Read more:
"We will have a slightly higher cost of living," Dmitriiev reasoned. "But we will have many more opportunities for business."
This created new problems. Rents are infamously high in New York City, where the average cost for a one-bedroom apartment is about
In general, the cost of housing in U.S. cities — and the lack of government help to afford it — is a challenge for many Ukrainians and other immigrants.
"We've seen a few people who have been frustrated by what is offered in the United States and not fully understanding that there's no housing assistance," Ziesemer said. "It's expensive to live here. And there's no subsidy, and people have to just find housing on the open market."
Eventually, the Dmitriievs found a place in a suburb of New York — New Rochelle, Westchester — that they could afford. But in the meantime, all the expenses of building their new life — rent, food, clothes, furniture, the flights from Europe — were beginning to add up, and Dmitriiev's Ukrainian salary was not enough to cover them all.
"You're basically living on your savings," he said. "And as you may know, life in the U.S. isn't cheap."
When Dmitriiev first arrived in September, he had about $30,000 in his bank account. By December, he and his wife had spent almost all of it.
'Here, everything changed'
Kostiantyn and Kseniia are far from the only Ukrainians to have this experience. Two others are their friends, Ihor Duniakov, 30, and his girlfriend, Ilona Hudzenko, 24. Like the Dmitriievs, they lived in Kharkiv. But unlike them, they didn't leave right away when the invasion started.
"When the war started, it was a really big surprise for us — for everybody," Duniakov said. "We didn't have any plan at first. … We lost our jobs. We didn't have enough money for a long time. ... So for one month, we just stayed at home and we didn't have any energy for anything."
Eventually, the missiles pummeling Kharkiv made it impossible for Duniakov and Hudzenko to stay. After about a month, they fled to Cherkasy, a city in central Ukraine. But when they heard about the Uniting for Ukraine program, they knew right away they wanted to apply. Hudzenko had an uncle in Las Vegas, and he was willing to host them until they could get on their feet in the U.S.
Braving the rockets, the couple drove back to Kharkiv to get their documents ready and sell their belongings. Once their application was approved, the couple made their way to Lviv, then to Frankfurt, Germany, and finally to Las Vegas. They arrived in September 2022.
It was not an easy transition. It took three months for Hudzenko to get her work authorization. For Duniakov, it took four months. And as it turned out, that was a lot longer than the uncle was willing to host them.
"We had to start work very fast because we had to move to another apartment and live separately from our relatives," Hudzenko said. "And it was hard to find the first job."
Hudzenko, who had been a public relations manager in Ukraine, started teaching private gymnastics and dance classes a few days a week. For Duniakov, who had been a digital product manager, the change was even more stark. Without a work authorization, one of the few opportunities available to him was to do manual labor at an Amazon warehouse. According to Duniakov, the company was willing to employ him for a few months before he got all his documents, but the work was exhausting.
"It was physically so hard," Hudzenko recalled. "We are used to working with our brains, not physically. Here, everything changed."
Meanwhile, other obstacles arose. Even with their new incomes, Duniakov and Hudzenko had trouble finding a landlord who would rent an apartment to them because they had no American credit history. And in order to get to their jobs, they needed a car, which they couldn't afford on their own. Eventually, Hudzenko's uncle bought the couple a vehicle, but they had to pay him back — starting with a $1,000 down payment. They still have about $19,000 to go.
Read more:
Duniakov and Hudzenko arrived in the U.S. with considerably less savings than the Dmitriievs — in total, they had between $3,000 and $4,000. By December 2022, just three months after they landed in Las Vegas, they had spent it all.
On the other hand, that was the same month the couple finally got their own apartment — they spent the last of their savings on the deposit. And about a month later, Duniakov got his work authorization. In the spring of 2023, he landed a white collar job at Cirque du Soleil.
For all their troubles, the couple is not bitter about their experience.
"God bless the U.S.," Hudzenko said. "Of course it's hard. … But every Ukrainian now has challenges every day, every month. We're not in a bad place. And our safety is the most important thing. Everything else is secondary."
A role for advisors
Back in New York, Dmitriiev knows he needs help with his finances. Even recouping the savings he's lost, he admitted, would not be nearly enough to prepare for a long-term future in the U.S., including retirement.
"Earning back $30,000 shouldn't be a target," Dmitriiev said. "Obviously, the system here is different. You have your 401(k) account, you do different things to be prepared to retire. And do I have a well-defined plan at this point in time? No, I don't."
The problem is Dmitriiev — and many other immigrants in the same struggle — can't afford to pay for financial advisors.
"If someone's from Ukraine who's looking for that sort of advice, they might want to find a Ukrainian-speaking, Russian-speaking advisor who's going to do pro bono service," said Nicholas Bunio, a certified financial planner at
Bunio, who is of Ukrainian descent himself, works with many immigrant clients, including some from Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union. For someone who just arrived from that region, he said, the American financial system is a bewildering new world.
"In Ukraine, there is no such thing as a Roth IRA," Bunio said. "Most of them just need advice. … What is a 401(k)? What type of health benefits do I have?"
Read more:
Fortunately, there are many organizations where wealth managers can volunteer. Planners can offer pro bono services through the
They can also help in another way: Displaced Ukrainians often need help navigating the U.S. immigration bureaucracy, but hiring a lawyer is expensive. Financial advisors can point them toward pro bono legal services, which are offered by
Back to Europe?
Of course, not every refugee chooses to stay in the United States. Ziesemer said she's seen a number of Ukrainians return to Europe, where many governments offer stronger social safety nets.
"There are some supportive benefits that are available for Ukrainians [in the U.S.], but not as robust as some other benefits that are offered by countries in Europe," she said. "So people have returned to Germany, to Poland, to other places that are seen as more welcoming."
Ziesemer also emphasized that while the U.S. system for Ukrainians is difficult, it's far harder for almost every other nationality of immigrants, especially those from Central and South America.
"I'm actually a little surprised that people still are coming to the United States," she said. "Immigrants have historically been able to kind of make their way here, but it does require a lot of ingenuity and perseverance and hardship. And it's not for everyone."
Today, Dmitriiev is still working for the same Ukrainian company. His humanitarian parole will expire in about a year. Will he and his wife remain in the United States? He's not sure.
"We would prefer to stay," he said, but "if everything stays like it is today, without significant changes, we may be considering moving back to Europe, to stay in some cheaper countries."
By his own estimate, the problems Dmitriiev has faced are mere "inconveniences" compared to what other Ukrainians have been through. But he also thinks he'd be able to afford a higher standard of living in countries closer to the war zone that he and his wife fled a year ago. Whatever nest egg he and his wife save up, he said, would go much further in Poland than it would in Philadelphia or New York.
"It's a great place to make money," Dmitriiev said of the United States. "But it's also a great place to spend money."
