Zakhar Azatian was on a Tahoe ski trip with friends when he got a text from his mother. After tapping open the message, he watched with disbelief the now-notorious Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Azatian, a Ukrainian refugee, moved to San Francisco with his wife in 2023 — after a yearlong stay in Germany — when Russia’s invasion of his native country caused them to flee Kyiv. Even now, when describing his reaction to the video, he is at a loss for words.
“There was anger in the room,” said Azatian, founder of the fitness and mental health startup BeHard. “It was really tough.”
Azatian is a beneficiary of the Uniting for Ukraine, or U4U, program, which has provided a temporary residency permit to Ukrainians resettling in the U.S. The sharp swing in the Trump administration’s foreign policy — which has included a pivot toward Russia and falsely blaming Ukraine for starting the war — has fomented shock and anger for the Ukrainian refugees who have made their home in the Bay Area.
Recently, though, the prevailing emotion for this group is anxiety, as the United States has paused new applications to U4U and is considering revoking the status of those who have already moved to the country under the program. Around 14,000 Bay Area residents were born in Ukraine, according to census data, and San Francisco is home to the highest proportion of people in the region with Ukrainian ancestry.
U4U was meant to grant refugees the eligibility to live, work, and study in the United States for up to two years. But a contradictory and constantly changing set of rules has left thousands in the dark as to what’s next.
“One can’t not be prepared,” Azatian said. “Just before the war started, some people in Ukraine didn’t take it seriously. Now we know we need to plan for the worst.”
Oksana Bandrivska, an immigration attorney with Bandrivska P.C., said she’s fielded hundreds of calls from Ukrainian immigrants stuck in that “scary uncertainty.” Participants in the U4U program who entered the country prior to Aug. 16, 2023, are able to apply for temporary protected status, which, if granted, offers a work permit and protection from deportation through Oct. 19, 2026.
However, for those who came to the U.S. later, the only option is to stay on as a less-protected parole status, which leaves refugees in a much more fragile situation.
“You cannot plan anything for today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow,” Bandrivska said. “For many of these people, you’ve just started to breathe, you just started to adjust to a new country, a new language, and then you’ve been told your status can be taken away any minute.”
Additionally, an administrative pause has gone into effect for all applications filed by Ukrainian immigrants on U4U parole status. For Bandrivska’s clients, that has meant stalled paperwork and applications, canceled interview appointments, and families left in legal limbo, with the clock running out.
“I’ve had people tell me they would rather be under bombing than be dealing with this,” Bandrivska said.
Tatiana Isa, a local Ukrainian entrepreneur, is organizing a class action lawsuit challenging the cancellation of U4U. “Ukrainians here are already under enormous emotional stress due to the ongoing war,” she said. “Now, on top of that, they have to deal with the fear of becoming undocumented in a foreign country.”
Bandrivska herself is an immigrant from Ukraine who joined other activists, attorneys, and service providers to form the Ukraine Immigration Task Force, a nonprofit legal organization meant to help with refugee resettlement.
“I still have family and friends in Ukraine fighting in the war, friends that are volunteers, clients who have pending visas,” Bandrivska said. “We all couldn’t believe it switched so quickly from white to black.”
Polina Poliakova, chief marketing officer for analytics firm Datavise, was an early applicant to the U4U program who wanted to bring her experience working in Ukraine’s tech sector to the Bay Area.
She left behind elderly parents in Nikopol, a town in the south of Ukraine, and moved to San Francisco with her 12-year-old daughter in the summer of 2022.
Poliakova hoped to find stability in her new home; she promptly enrolled her daughter in a public school and started working on a green card application for permanent residency. With the recent whiplash, though, she’s feeling “frustrated, disappointed, and unmotivated.”
Unsure about her place in the U.S., Poliakova has paused the green card process and is considering various options, including speeding up the timeline for marriage to her partner, a Ukrainian who is a U.S. citizen.
For Anna Shchehula, a growth manager for startups, a future rooted in the Bay Area was the light at the end of the tunnel.
A self-proclaimed digital nomad, Shchehula was caught up in the war in Ukraine before decamping for elsewhere in Europe, then Asia. In 2023, she visited San Francisco for the TechCrunch Disrupt conference and fell in love with the city. She decided to apply to U4U to set down roots. “It was a huge commitment,” she said. “I was looking for a new home.”
When the fraught Oval Office meeting with Zelensky went viral, Shchehula’s relative peace was replaced with frantic scrolling and texts. Soon, she began attending local protests.
“I love living in the city. I love the people. I love the community,” she said. “And I thought, oh, no, not again. I have to pack my things again, no way.”
It’s a particular mix of exasperation, disbelief, and fatigue that has become familiar to many Ukrainians in the Bay Area.
Volodymyr Shostakovych, a product designer for Missouri Star Quilt Company and a freelance graphic designer for several Bay Area startups, joined his wife and two children six months after they moved from Ukraine to Marin County.
Two years ago, Shostakovych was filled with optimism; his daughter Ira, who moved to the Bay Area shortly after the war broke out, had benefited from a successful campaign to fund training to continue her budding professional tennis career.
Now, Shostakovych said, he must consider the possibility of his family’s protections being revoked.
“I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’ve been working hard and helping startups design their pitch decks, helping startups raise money, millions of dollars,” Shostakovych said. “Now, after three years here, someone can cancel my life.”
Shostakovych arrived in the U.S via the U4U program before transitioning to temporary protected status, set to expire next year. But even this protection may be a thin shield. The Department of Homeland Security recently announced that it would terminate the designation for around 350,000 Venezuelans on April 7, revoking the Biden administration’s efforts to extend the protections until Oct. 2, 2026.
Bandrivska, the immigration attorney, said she’s worried that the harrowing situation the Venezuelan refugees are facing could soon be the reality for Ukrainians too.
With the end of temporary protections approaching, Ukrainians have been swimming in bureaucracy in their efforts to extend their stay in the U.S. According to Isa, there’s a frenzy of refugee Telegram and Facebook groups featuring immigration lawyers, do-gooders, and nonprofit representatives, often providing conflicting advice.
Another popular post on the forums? Requests for psychological help to deal with the stress.
“You won’t find any Ukrainian, or immigrant in general, who will tell you they’re fine with what’s going on,” Shostakovich said, adding that it’s “probably the darkest time since the war started.”
To get ahead of potential unfortunate developments, Shchehula is looking into O-1 visas for individuals with extraordinary abilities, also known as a “talent visa,” that’s given to certain entrepreneurs, scientists, and artists. Azatian is considering applying for an EB-1 or EB-2, employment-based visas that lead to permanent residency. Shostakovych is hoping for the same.
Though concerned about the future of his family, Shostakovych feels privileged compared to other Ukrainians who might not have the skill set, language, or status to potentially remain in the U.S., where he has the advantage of being part of the Bay Area tech community.
“I don’t need any benefits from the U.S., just a permission to work and stay,” he said. He compares himself and his compatriots to a phoenix: “You can burn me, and I will rise.”