When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kyrylo Gencho was at home in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city located near the Russian border.
Before the war, Gencho says he owned a clothing factory and lived what he described as a happy, quiet and stable life.
Then, almost overnight, everything changed.
“ I was just shocked at first,” Gencho told BPR in English, his second language, which he began learning after he moved to the United States. “ I couldn't receive that the war started because pretty often I was in Russia. I have friends there.”
Gencho described the first days of the war as a thunderstorm of constant explosions, sirens and planes overhead.
He lived like that for eight months. Soon after the war started, he saw a Russian bomb fall on his factory, destroying everything.
“ I just broken totally,” he said. “I lost my business. I lost my money, I lost equipment, and I was just totally destroyed.”
He decided he needed to leave and applied for a program called Uniting for Ukraine. It permits Ukrainians to enter the U.S. legally under what’s called humanitarian parole. The program created a pathway for Ukrainian citizens fleeing the war to be admitted into the U.S. so they can stay in the country for up to two years as long as they have an American sponsor.
Once granted parole, Ukrainians are eligible to apply for employment authorization in the states.
A friend of Gencho, who went through a similar process during the Luhansk conflict in 2014, helped connect him with American sponsors who live in Asheville.
“He found one family, a lady was Ukrainian and the husband was American,” Gencho said. “They are also Christians and we started to speak with them and they sponsored me.”
Gencho was approved for humanitarian parole and arrived in the U.S. in November 2022, with his guitar, a backpack and a suitcase.
Uniting for Ukraine started in 2022 as the main entry program for Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion to enter the country legally through humanitarian parole. Once individuals have been in the U.S. for some time, they could then apply for temporary protected status (TPS).
Ukrainians can hold both parole and TPS which grants authorization to work. The two differ as parole is gained before entering the country and TPS is after you have lived in the U.S. for some time.
Humanitarian parole allows individuals outside the U.S. to request parole into the U.S. on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons. It doesn’t provide a pathway to citizenship or lawful permanent residence – such as a green card – on its own.
The parole expires two years after the date of initial entry.
TPS allows people from countries affected by war, natural disasters or other unsafe conditions to live and work legally in the U.S. for a limited time. It also gives immigrants work permits so they can earn money. The temporary status is renewed every one to two years.
When Gencho arrived in Asheville, the director of a local religious nonprofit, Freedom in Christ, invited him to volunteer at its recovery center. He later started working there and was given a room to live in on-site.
Gencho is one of approximately 2,000 Ukrainian arrivals who have settled in North Carolina. That’s according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services which collects data from providers in the State Refugee Office program.
Roughly 500 Ukrainians call the western part of the state home, according to Lutheran Services Carolinas, one of the groups that helps resettle new Americans for the state.
Now, Gencho’s future here is uncertain after he was approved for re-parole in 2024.
Shortly after taking office in 2025, President Donald Trump signed multiple executive orders, including one directing the termination of all categorical humanitarian parole programs like Uniting for Ukraine.
Gencho’s re-parole is expiring in November and his TPS application is still in processing.
Getting either status is not guaranteed. Changes to immigration processing and policy are leaving many in limbo.
For people like Gencho, potentially losing his visa matters because his status allows him to work legally in the country, according to Seth Hershberger, director of the New Americans Program at Lutheran Services Carolinas
“Their (Ukrainians) ability to work legally in the United States is tied to their status,” Hershberger told BPR. “If they don't have humanitarian parole or TPS, then they're at a crossroads where there's not many other great pathways for them to work legally here in the U.S.”
The nonpartisan group helps refugees resettle in the Carolinas by helping them learn English and find housing, jobs and legal support.
Hershberger said many of his organization’s clients are reapplying for parole or TPS and are waiting a long time for a decision. He estimates that affects up to 40% of its clients, calling that a conservative figure.
And that can lead to all kinds of problems.
“They'll (Ukrainian clients) get their new parole period, and then their employment authorization document comes and it's already expired. So then we have to apply for a new one, which could be another six to eight months before they actually receive that,” Hershberger said.
An NPR review of data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), shows that nearly 12 million applications are awaiting a decision for citizenship, work permits or other permissions to live in the U.S.
Along with the long wait, visa application fees have gone up through the H.R. 1, or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed in 2025. According to Hershberger, the cost to reapply for parole for his Ukrainian clients was around $600 before 2025. Now it's around $1,000 – and that doesn’t include the cost of applying for a work permit or other fees.
On top of all that, specific problems with the program originated from its inception, according to Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.
“ The downside was that the (Uniting for Ukraine) was always temporary,” Gelatt said. “ There have been some efforts to push Congress to open some kind of path to permanent status for Ukrainians, but those really haven't moved in Congress.”
Gelatt said the program didn't provide any straightforward path for people to stay permanently in the country because former President Joe Biden was responding to an immediate need and not a long-term solution.
“The Biden administration implemented several programs to give people from various parts of the world temporary access to safety in the United States. And I think that happened in an emergency situation, thinking that down the road a broader solution could be found for those people,” Gelatt said. “It turns out that with the change in administration, the conversation about offering more durable protections really hasn't come up. That has left Ukrainians, but also people from other countries, sort of hanging in limbo in the United States.”
Both Republican and Democratic elected officials in Congress have made multiple efforts to pass the Ukrainian Adjustment Act. The bill was first introduced in 2023 in the U.S. House of Representatives to provide a path to a green card for Ukrainian parolees.
The bill was modeled after the Afghan Adjustment Act, one of the preeminent pieces of bipartisan legislation about immigration during the Biden administration, according to the Global Refugee, a nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to serve refugee children and families.
The proposed bill was brought up again in 2025 by Rep. Bill Keating, D-Mass. It received bipartisan support from 18 co-sponsors, including western North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican who represents most of the region in the state’s 11th Congressional District
However, the legislation hasn’t gained any traction and the lack of urgency to pass the proposed law has made it difficult for many Ukrainians who have begun rebuilding their lives in the U.S., according to Gelatt.
“People started to put down some roots in the United States and build their lives here and then realize that they may not be able to stay after all and might need to head back, if not to Ukraine, then to maybe a European country that will take them in,” Gelatt said.
She added that while Ukrainians have not been a primary focus of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions, the loss of legal status still carries risks, including potential detention or removal.
For Gencho, not knowing what could happen after November makes him very worried and scared. His humanitarian parole expires that month and his TPS application is still waiting for approval.
“My attorney told me maybe I can go out of country and come back,” Gencho told BPR. “But I really scared to go out because I have no places for living.”
Leaving Asheville and returning to Ukraine is something he is hoping to avoid. He’s a devout Christian who wants to avoid violence.
“I can't take gun and go to the war. It's not my case of life. I can't go to war and a lot of my friends died in this war,” Gencho said.
The Uniting for Ukraine program stopped accepting new applications in January of 2025. Ukrainians already in the country may still be eligible for a two-year extension when their initial parole expires. TPS has also been extended for Ukrainians through mid-October.
For now, Gencho prays as he prepares to reapply for re-parole later this month. He also hopes that his TPS application will be approved as he wants to continue to build a life here, hopefully with his partner who's expected to join him soon.
