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There's Now an App for Ukrainians Seeking to Remain in the U.S.

A legal clinic, a tech company and two Ukrainian volunteers in Salt Lake City are building a tool to translate complicated immigration forms.

Kateryna Kravchenko (left) and Eva Malezhyk helped to translate application forms for Ukrainian-speaking asylum-seekers.

Kateryna Kravchenko (left) and Eva Malezhyk helped to translate application forms for Ukrainian-speaking asylum-seekers.

Photographer: Kimball Dean Parker
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Ukrainians don’t have middle names. Not in an American sense, anyway. In addition to first and family names, Slavic peoples use patronymics, names derived from their ancestors, typically their fathers.

The middle-name question can throw off applicants right out of the gate when filling out English-language forms. That might be the first of many hiccups for Ukrainians in the U.S. who are newly eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status to remain in the country. Running to more than 300 questions written in federal legalese, the forms can be trying even for English speakers.