By Sutton Bantle, Wagner College Lev (Leo) Kukhar, now twenty-one years old, was only two when his family emigrated from Kiev (Kyiv), Ukraine to Brooklyn, NY. His mother, father, and maternal grandparents left Ukraine less than two years after it became an independent country from the Soviet Union. Leo describes himself as a Russian immigrant versus Ukrainian because his family associates with the Soviet Union. Ukraine is located in Eastern Europe bordered by Russia to the East; Belarus to the North; Poland, Slovakia  Hungary, and Romania to the West; and the Black Sea to the South. Leo’s immediate family that immigrated with him were not the first to arrive in Brooklyn. He had extended family members who had immigrated during the reign of the Soviet Union. The Kukhars are an example of chain-migration. Within six months of his family’s arrival Leo’s cousin, aunt and...