Immigration 

After 7 years of Svetlana growing up in Odesa, her and her family left their home country in 1979. For Svetlana and her family, immigrating to the U.S. was a difficult  process. Her entire family was denied permission to leave Ukraine at first and labeled “refuseniks” because they were Jewish. They faced countless challenges, like dealing with endless "red tape", spending a lot of money they didn’t always have, and needing to secure a sponsor in the U.S. Despite all these obstacles, they worked hard to make their dream of freedom and opportunity a reality.

Svetlana and her family took a train from Odesa to Prague to board a plane. Because Svetlana began her immigration journey at the young age of seven, she described the train ride and travel as an "adventure."

Svetlana and her family's exit visas were for Israel. Because of this, they had to live in Italy for two months while their visas were reworked to allow them to enter the United States legally. Even though they were living in Rome, it wasn’t a vacation. Her family had very little money to live on, which forced them to sell goods from Ukraine at the Italian market to make ends meet. In Rome, Svetlana lived in a small apartment with her dad’s entire family, leaving very little room for everyone.

In November, Svetlana and her family finally arrived in the United States. They initially settled in Brighton, where many other Soviet Union immigrants were living at the time.