Yaroslav Yaroslavskyi is one of the migrant workers recruited by a woman in Muscatine. He was one of the few workers able to leave Ukraine.
MUSCATINE, Iowa — Editor’s note: This story is part of a two-part series on migrant workers from Ukraine. You can read/watch part one here.
A Muscatine woman founded iWorkMarket to help businesses across the U.S. recruit and hire seasonal migrant workers.
Over the years, Irina Mealy has lost count of how many workers she’s helped get H-2B and H-2A visas to work for agricultural and nonagricultural businesses.
Mealy herself is from Russia. She immigrated to the U.S. in 2000.
iWorkMarket has recruiters in Poland, France, Israel, Mexico, Lithuania, Moldova, and also hires workers from Costa Rica, Guatemala and Haiti. However, the majority of its workers are from western Ukraine.
Many of her Ukraine-based workers already had their visas to come work in the U.S. for the season, but because of the Russian invasion, they are now unable to. She estimates more than 20 people can’t work right now.
“We were not ready for that,” Mealy said. “None of the workers, I mean, I was asking, ‘Do you think it’s going to be okay?’ And none of them thought this is going to happen.”
She said many of them had their plane tickets and were set to leave Ukraine the day Russia invaded or in the next few days after that.
“It was a shock,” Mealy said. “They could have left like a couple days earlier if we knew, but they were scheduled right exactly after that date. So many companies didn’t get their workers back.”
All Ukrainian men ages 18 to 60 were banned from leaving the country. Mealy has had to work to recruit more people from other countries to fill their jobs.
A few of her workers were still able to leave Ukraine and come to the U.S., Mealy said, because of medical conditions or if they have more than three children.
One of her recruits able to leave is Yaroslav Yaroslavskyi. He’s worked with Mealy for several years. He’s worked for a seafood company in Alaska, a farm in Iowa and is currently a truck driver for a farm in North Dakota.
Yaroslavskyi was in Odesa when Russia invaded.
“We are staying in our apartments. I (lived) near airport, two kilometers from airport to my house,” Yaroslavskyi said. “We (had) the first rocket attack from 4:30 a.m. until 5 a.m. We (had) three attacks in the airport. And after four hours, we have five attacks more. After six hours from the first attack, we have the tanks …….