Not only are frustrated Ukrainian refugees withdrawing from the program after waiting up to six weeks for the visa to take effect, but British sponsors are deciding to leave due to visa problems for families fleeing the war. Following allegations made last week by an informant, the Observer has been flooded with donor cases citing difficulties in providing housing for Ukrainian refugees. One group, Holme Valley Homes for Ukraine in West Yorkshire, said a quarter of the 160 applicants in the program – 40 – had withdrawn due to delays in obtaining a travel visa. The EU, on the other hand, has given up on the need for Ukrainians to have visas. “Families are leaving and choosing not to come to the UK because of the time it takes to get visas,” said Rebecca Goff, co-ordinator of the Holme Valley sponsorship program. On Saturday morning, a family of six Ukrainians told the group they would be staying in Romania due to visa delays. At the same time, a UK sponsor decided that it could not wait any longer for a Ukrainian Muslim family who had been racist when they fled to Poland and are now “poor” in Baghdad. The most common obstacle seems to be families who do not receive visas for all its members. The informant, who worked for the Homes for Ukraine helpline, revealed that he had encountered many cases where UK visas had been issued to an entire Ukrainian family except for one member, which effectively stopped the family from traveling to the UK. but allowed the government to say it had issued some visas. The allegations prompted Home Secretary Kevin Foster to respond last week, telling parliament that allegations that Ukrainian children were not granted visas to prevent their families from traveling to the UK were “utter nonsense”. But last Thursday the government acknowledged that processing problems within the Interior Ministry had led to delays. Gough said they had seen many cases dating back to when the program was announced on March 14, where visas were not issued to a family member but the rest were granted. “I have seen so many cases of orphans and orphans not being able to travel. “This plan is not good news, it is a disaster.” Goof also revealed that several Ukrainians were tired of waiting for a visa to the United Kingdom despite having a sponsor and returning to the Mariupol area. “They have not been in contact for 10 days and we are afraid of the worst,” Gough said. He added that some cases in which he worked under the Homes for Ukraine program ended up with the children involved falling victim to trafficking while waiting for permission to travel to the United Kingdom. “There is a lot of trafficking, a lot of children are disappearing. “People we came in contact with later heard from their friends that they had been trafficked,” Gough said. Sponsor Ginny Macbeth, from Wivenhoe, Kent, said she had heard of Ukrainians getting angry with UK owners after weeks of delays, without realizing it was the British government’s fault. “They assume they have confused it,” he said. Macbeth revealed that of the family of five Ukrainians he hoped to help, four had received visas in addition to their middle-aged four-year-old. The parents, filmmakers hosting an international human rights documentary festival, left Kyiv with their children when their road was bombed and are now in Bucharest, Romania. The government said: “Thanks to the generosity of the public who offered their homes to Ukrainians fleeing the war and through our Ukrainian Family Plan, more than 86,000 visas have been issued with more than 27,000 Ukrainians arriving safely in the UK. “We are processing thousands of visas a day – this shows that the changes we have made to streamline the service are working and we will continue to build on this success to speed up the process even more.”
