July 26, 2022 Sharon Samber, HIAS.org (HIAS) Sussana Rodriguez now has confidence…and a hot dog cart. Growing up in Venezuela, the 31-year-old housewife never felt she could succeed in business. But, in 2018, when the economic crisis forced Rodriguez to leave home and move to Guyana, many things changed, and…

July 22, 2022 Betsy Joles (Betsy Joles for HIAS) KRAKOW — Keeping an autistic child at ease amid the din of war was difficult enough, but it was an explosion in early March which made their house shake, that finally convinced Galina Mitrofanova to take her 6-year-old son Makar out…

July 19, 2022 Betsy Joles (Betsy Joles for HIAS) WARSAW — When Maria Radionova talks about leaving Ukraine, she attributes her family’s escape to one group: volunteers. The 43-year-old mother and her children made it onto a bus to Poland after dodging missile attacks as they moved west from Kharkiv…

July 5, 2022 Betsy Joles (Betsy Joles for HIAS) WARSAW — Housing was an afterthought when Oksana Bezkorovaina arrived in Poland from bordering Ukraine with her daughter Masha and sister, Maryna. The trio had been through the wringer trying to make it out of their home in Kharkiv, where they…

July 5, 2022 Bill Swersey — Vice President, Communications In 1985, a young filmmaker working on a documentary about the Statue of Liberty, was interviewing recent immigrants on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, when he came upon a grandmother and her twin grandsons. He stopped and asked what the…

June 30, 2022 Ayelet Parness, HIAS.org (Magdiel Galeano Gómez) For Magdiel Galeano Gómez and his husband Jeffrey*, both refugees from Nicaragua living in Costa Rica, the idea for their business, Jeff Creative, first began to solidify as they collected beautiful shells and rocks during a walk on the beach. From…

June 28, 2022 Ayelet Parness, HIAS.org Finding housing is one of the first — and often most challenging — issues that refugees face in a new country. Watch as Airbnb host Mery, refugee guest Daniela, and HIAS staff member Cristina discuss the difference that hosting refugees through Airbnb can make. …

June 28, 2022 Alan Chin Alan Chin/HIAS “I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and started calling colleagues,” Alexander (Sasha) Galkin recalled of the first night of the war. Like so many Ukrainians woken on February 24 by Russian bombs and missiles exploding near his home in Kyiv, he rushed to…

June 27, 2022 Ayelet Parness, HIAS.org (Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images) Within the next week, the Supreme Court will release a decision on Biden v. Texas, the case that will determine the fate of the “ Remain in Mexico” program — formally called the Migrant Protection Protocols — that forces…