US Immigration from Ukraine

My niece and her parents are trying to escape Ukraine and they had some concerns about my Niece finishing her High School Education. She was in her 9th form when this chaos started and they are unsure of if or when schools will resume. My wife and I were wondering if we could sponsor her and get her to the United States as quickly as possible so that she may be able to start with the 22-23 school year (which starts in early August around here).

Yes I understand that it depends on if they are able to get to a safe place, but wanting to get ahead of the ball so that we can hit the ground running.

Thanks in Advance

I filed an expedite request for my Ukrainian wife and daughter on 2/24/21. Both I-130's were originally filed 4/27/2021.

Wife TSC actively reviewing 12/10/2021

Daughter PSC actively reviewing 9/10/2021.

My wife's expedite was granted 3/4/22 and her I-130 approval occurred the same day.

My daughter's expedite was outside the 7 business day window so on 3/16/2022 I uploaded my wife's NOA2 and the emailed notice of the expedite approval. My thought was that since the expedites were exactly the same (humanitarian: war, cannot work) that Potomac might tend to approve if they saw that Texas approved.

When I logged on to USCIS 3/16/2022, I found my daughter's NOA2 in the documents tab. I have not seen an email regarding a decision on the expedite as of yet.

Was this a coincidence that the NOA2 came on the same day as I uploaded additional documents, or did the upload prompt someone to look at the file? I have no idea, and don't really care, but I thought this information might be useful to others so here it is.

Good luck, I'm off to the NVC,

What has everyone done? It's impossible to obtain during martial law.

CDC has issued an exception for the pre flight covid test for Ukrainians. With some strange caveats - Ukrainian must be traveling with a US citizen. My question is this. When I read through the attestation that the Ukrainian signs it says that they agree to get fully vaccinated within 60 days of arrival in USA. I am trying to figure out if that means that if the airline will let her on the plane if she is not vaccinated. I can find no other place which states that she does not need to vaccinated. But yet if she agrees to get vaccinated then..... This is part evaluating dumping the k-1 that we started and going with cr1 and what that timeline would look like. I also know that in a rational conversation you might suggest that she go get vaccinated but there is not a rational conversation to be had with her right now.

This is a comment/rant and not a question. Western Union is profiteering from the crisis.

My wife asked me to help send money to family friends that evacuated to Germany from Ukraine. They cannot access their Ukrainian bank account and cannot open a new account in Germany, at least not for the near future (they need to get ID's, a place to stay and residency documents). My wife kept mentioning to use Western Union because that's what her friends recommended, and probably because it's well known.

I saw that WU is offering Zero fees for money to Ukraine. However, it's a trap for 2 reasons. First, the Zero fee is when transferring to UAH. But refugees and evacuees will need the currency of the country they have migrated to, which would be PLZ or CZK or Euros. When I selected Euros to Germany (where my wife's friends ended up), WU charges a fee.

The second and more insidious trap is the exchange rate. When I selected to transfer $1000 US, their exchange rate was 822 Euros. This rate is basically a 10% surcharge of the bank exchange rate of 916 Euros.

For comparison, the same amount ($1000 US) sent via Moneygram would result in 898 Euros to the recipient.

/rant:

At this time, when people are vulnerable and in need of emergency help, Western Union is cashing in on the surge of money transfer activities.

/rant over

For those of you that need to send money, use Moneygram. Or do what we ended up doing: the person my wife's friends are staying with is someone they already knew who lives in Germany. We got their friend's German bank account information and sent 910 Euros via Wise (an online banking/money transfer service). I am sure a similar exchange rate would be available via wire transfers from your US bank to the recipient's bank.