Ukrainian refugees were quickly welcomed to Wisconsin. Now red tape makes their future uncertain.

Anna Borys remembers the conversation clearly.

Over breakfast in early May, she sat down with her husband, Eugene, at their home in Ukraine and tried to decide whether they should leave everything behind.

“Should we go, and start everything from the beginning in a different country, or should we stay?” Borys recalled.

The verdict that day was to stay. Borys was pregnant, and she and her husband wanted to continue operating their business, doing what they could to support their employees and their homeland.

But by July, the war with Russia wasn’t getting any better. Previously safe cities in western Ukraine were being bombed. The family decided to do what had been unthinkable when the war began months earlier: move to the United States with their two young daughters.