A Queens mom was reunited on Wednesday with her 4-year-old son, who had been stuck in Ukraine for several months because of visa issues.
Natalia Kuzmina, a 28-year-old computer programmer, got a green card to live in the United States after tying the knot with her New Yorker boyfriend in Las Vegas — but was unable to bring over little Mykhailo.
She hadn’t seen him since she visited Ukraine in December but was finally able to get him a green card.
“Probably the biggest happiness in the world is to see your child and to be with your child when you can see him every day,” she told reporters at her Whitestone home. “You don’t realize it when you have your child every day. But when you’re apart, you just feel it, that you should be together.”
Kuzmina had feared that Mykhailo wouldn’t be allowed into the United States until next year because of the ongoing Ukraine conflict.
Rep. Steve Israel (D-LI) helped expedite the paperwork that brought Mykhailo to New York last Friday.
“This is a homecoming,” Israel said. “This is about a union of a family that faced violence and instability in Ukraine but also the possibility of bureaucratic delay in our own country. I am so happy that we were able to cut through the red tape and reunite Misha [Mykhailo] with his mother.”
Kuzmina said she’s grateful to the congressman and his staff.
“I never thought they can do something,” she said. “It was a miracle. I wasn’t even hoping that something like this can happen. And I can stand here with my son and we can be a family again.”
Additional reporting by David K. Li