Escaping
Ukraine One 1199 member’s family describes what it feels like to flee for their lives.
20
May-June 2022
Annabelle Heckler & Tsira Akhobadze
Hanna Duda has been an 1199 homecare worker with the Personal Touch agency for 22 years, since she first arrived in New York from Ukraine. She became a US citizen as soon as she could and quickly applied for family-sponsored visas for her daughters, Liliya Kupchyshyna and Halyna Palis. It took ten years for her youngest daughter, Palis, to be allowed to join her. “It was easier for me, because I was unmarried and had no children at the time,” says Duda’s daughter Palis, who came to the US in 2010. For her older sister Kupchyshyna, it was a tougher process because she had a family. She finally got her exit interview
