100,000 Ukrainian refugees will soon be allowed to live in the U.S. Philly resettlement agencies are ready.

The Biden administration intends to accept up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into the United States — and resettlement agencies in Philadelphia say they’re ready.

“We’re thrilled,” said Margaret O’Sullivan, executive director of Nationalities Service Center, the region’s largest resettlement agency. “We live in a state and city that’s ready to welcome Ukrainians.”

White House officials said Thursday that refugees would be able to come here through multiple legal immigration routes, including the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which offers a path to citizenship.

The process through which people fleeing conflict enter the United States is important, because it directly impacts the level of government support they can receive and their ability to stay permanently.

“Any number is great news,” said Cathryn Miller-Wilson, executive director of HIAS Pennsylvania, the immigrant-assistance organization in Philadelphia. “A hundred thousand is a great start. We could do more.”

She cautioned: It’s one thing for the administration to announce a big number of refugee admissions amid the Russian invasion. It’s quite another, and harder, to make sure the United States has hired sufficient personnel to process the applications and vet the refugees.

It typically takes years for a refugee to be screened and approved to come to the United States. Allowing someone to file the refugee paperwork will mean nothing if there’s no staff to process it, she noted.

In the U.S. refugee system, 100,000 represents a huge number — roughly 10 times the total number of refugees who were resettled here in 2021. It comes as the nation continues to welcome 76,000 Afghan allies who were evacuated amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August, which commenced the largest American resettlement effort since the end of the Vietnam War.

Most Afghans were admitted under what’s called humanitarian parole, not as legal refugees. Parole is merely a permission to enter, not an immigration status, and that has complicated the future of Afghan families.

That 100,000, while big in terms of U.S. resettlement, is a fraction of the 3.6 million Ukrainians who have fled the country, mostly to Poland, and the millions more who have been displaced inside their nation by the violence.

“It’s really too small. The number is way too small,” said Iryna Mazur, the honorary consul of Ukraine in Philadelphia, and an immigration lawyer who specializes in asylum and family reunification.

People trying to escape the war need help now — not years from now, after undergoing the refugee-admissions procedure, she said. Many in Ukraine have family and friends in this country who are willing to house and support them, and Ukrainian churches are ready to do the same.

“Maybe it’s just a ‘good beginning,’” she said, because “many more people will need help.”

President Joe Biden announced the plan, and that the U.S. would donate $1 billion to help European nations awash in refugees, on Thursday in Brussels, where he held a series of emergency summits with European officials. Biden said that among the first Ukrainians coming to the U.S. will be those who already have family here.

That could mean bigger numbers coming to Philadelphia. The region is home to about 60,000 Ukrainian immigrants and people of Ukrainian ancestry, one of the largest and most vibrant Ukrainian communities in the country.

Many Ukrainians here are desperate to get family members out of the war zone, but have been blocked by federal immigration laws that guaranteed years of delay.

In recent weeks, Philadelphia immigration lawyer Ricky Palladino has gotten hundreds of calls from worried Ukrainian and Russian families — and he had a dozen or more conversations with local Ukrainians on Thursday.

“The first question is, ‘What does this mean for my loved one, my family member? Who qualifies and who doesn’t?’” he said. “The answer at this point is we don’t know.”

Little has been clarified beyond the initial number, he noted. What’s certain: Those 100,000 slots will fill quickly, given the millions of refugees and displaced people.

He wants the administration to streamline the family-reunification process, which would allow more people to come to the United States. Other avenues like humanitarian parole can be used to get people quickly out of danger, he added.

“We expect Philadelphia will be a place of choice for many Ukrainians, since we have a strong Ukrainian community,” said Amy Eusebio, executive director of the city Office of Immigrant Affairs. “We’re thrilled to hear that the federal government has authorized this resettlement.”

The Biden administration earlier designated Ukraine for Temporary Protected Status, meaning Ukrainians currently in the United States can stay and work without fear of deportation for at least 18 months.

But Thursday’s announcement represented the first big move to allow large numbers of endangered Ukrainians to come here. Canada and Australia earlier announced special measures to welcome Ukrainian refugees.

”Welcoming 100,000 Ukrainians would be an important recognition that the United States must play both a supporting and leading role,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in Baltimore, which resettled a quarter of the 20,000 Ukrainian refugees brought to the United States since 2012. “The sheer scale of displacement requires a coordinated global effort.”

Complicating any resettlement is the ongoing impact of former President Trump’s starvation of the refugee system. Amid record-low refugee caps and admissions, and dwindling government reimbursements, about a third of the nation’s 300 local resettlement agencies went out of business, suspended operations, or cut programming, according to federal officials.

Those that survived were weakened by layoffs and departures.

In 2021, Biden raised the cap on refugees to 62,500, though only 11,411 people were resettled, the lowest number since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. The administration raised the cap to 125,000 for fiscal 2022, but through February only 6,494 had been resettled in this country.

The ongoing resettlement of 76,000 Afghans does not count in those refugee figures, since they entered under humanitarian parole. Their arrival has provoked a hiring spurt among resettlement agencies.

Nationalities Service Center leaders said the demands of resettling 600 Afghan evacuees won’t hinder its effort to help Ukrainian arrivals.

“We’ll be there to answer the call,” O’Sullivan said. “NSC stands ready to serve.”