Northern Kentucky Senator Chris McDaniel (R-Taylor Mill) introduced a bill Wednesday morning that will set up a fund to help Ukrainian refugees resettle in Kentucky.
Initially introduced as a “shell” bill with no information on the agenda, Senate Bill 195 will seek to help solve the problem of resettling refugees in Kentucky. While the bill applies to all those affected by war, the immediate issue is with Ukrainian refugees displaced by the Russian invasion.
“Sometimes we’re presented with odd opportunities where public policy and human demand intersect,” McDaniel said while introducing the bill to the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee, which he also chairs. “I believe that we’re at one of those odd points in history.”
McDaniel dug into the unfolding humanitarian crisis and catastrophe in Ukraine.
“In the past three weeks, three million folks, who were otherwise going about their normal lives were displaced into the joining nation of Poland,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel said that this would equate to roughly 450,000 people per week entering the Commonwealth with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
“As this year advances, there are probably going to be significant opportunities to help with the resettlement of these people who wanted nothing to be free and are leaving countrymen behind who are fighting the very kind of fight that this nation fought several centuries ago,” McDaniel said.
Under the bill, a fund would be set up to provide roughly $10,000 per family that relocates to Kentucky. This would qualify approximately 5,000 families that lost their homes due to war, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A scholarship would also be set up for the children of these refugees. The fund would also appropriate $5 million per fiscal year of the biennium to Kentucky Refugee Ministries for the program’s administration.
Testifying on behalf of the bill was John Koehlinger, executive director of the Kentucky Refugee Ministries. He mentioned that he had briefly spoken to McDaniel and learned a small amount about the bill.
“I do want the broad committee to know, Kentucky has an outsized role in the U.S. refugee program … we have a long history of resettling history here of resettling refugees,” Koehlinger said.
The bill would also help Kentucky solve its workforce shortage problem, according to McDaniel.
“The public policy element is we know we have a workforce problem in the Commonwealth, and we’re not going to get out of that anytime soon,” McDaniel said.
The bill passed committee and will now move to the Senate for a full vote.
