Governor Hochul: “This is the place that has the Statue of Liberty out our window. And I said from the beginning, we want to welcome them first. So we'll have the resources. We have communities waiting with open arms from Buffalo to Syracuse, to Rochester, to Binghamton, to Utica, to New York City. They've all been asking for the ability to do this. So we encourage anyone interested to go to NY.gov/Ukraine to get more details on this."
Earlier today, Governor Hochul recommitted New York State's strong support for welcoming Ukrainian refugees following the Biden Administration's announcement of a new program to expedite the process for obtaining humanitarian parolee status for displaced individuals fleeing the war in Ukraine.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the event is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
But also some breaking news out of the White House, we have been asking for some time since the start of the Russian invasion into Ukraine and knowing that there are thousands of Ukrainians in search of refuge and as the state that has the largest Ukrainian population, we wanted to welcome them.
So I've been in constant communication with the White House and we just received word from President Biden that there'll be a new program to roll out, expediting humanitarian parolee status, which will allow the families of Ukrainians to apply, to have them come and sponsor them to come to the state of New York. So we've been waiting for this. I think it's going to be a big sigh of relief among family members here, as well as the Ukrainian businesses, Ukrainian churches, we’ve visited them all and now they'll be able to take this great step toward the unification of Ukrainians and their family members here and want to get them here.
This is the place that has the Statue of Liberty out our window. And I said from the beginning, we want to welcome them first. So we'll have the resources. We have communities waiting with open arms from Buffalo to Syracuse, to Rochester, to Binghamton, to Utica, to New York City. They've all been asking for the ability to do this.
So we encourage anyone interested to go to NY.gov/ukraine to get more details on this. I just want to make sure everybody was aware of that great news out of Washington to be able to help our fellow humans across the world who are in such distress situations right now, we need to give them some relief and perhaps even save their lives.