Ukraine is Weird

Sometimes, the things my native country is doing are too ridiculous to understand. A student just told me that a relative of hers has been living in Ukraine and dedicating a lot of time and effort to establishing non-profit educational programs for the young people of the country. God knows, such programs are sorely needed in Ukraine. Recently, however, the Ukrainian government introduced limitations on the number of days in a year that a foreign national can spend in Ukraine without asking for a citizenship status. So now my student's relative has to discontinue her activities and leave the country.

From these measures one could infer that there are crowds of Americans dying to move to Ukraine and the government has to stem the tide of immigrants. The reality, however, is very different. Many people leave the country every year in search of a better life elsewhere. The Ukrainian government definitely doesn't have to beat Americans who want to work for the country's benefit off with a stick. Maybe the Ukrainian government prefers to imagine the country as a target of massive American immigration but that is simply not the case. While our authorities indulge in these fantasies and act accordingly, the population fo the country suffers. But who cares about regular citizens and nice people like my student's relative. All that matters is that the government can keep indulging in its wishful thinking.