Agnieszka Kosowicz, the president of the board of the Polish Migration Forum, an NGO that helps foreigners integrate into Polish society, is concerned about the sustainability of the Polish response to Ukrainians. “There are hundreds of thousands of people that have invited refugees to their homes, and on the one hand this is all very optimistic and sounds good,” she told me, “but on the other hand I think it’s like sitting on a ticking bomb because, being a human being, you know that you cannot host guests forever.” Even if they had the will and the patience, some Poles simply don’t have the resources to sustain their initial levels of generosity. Magda Mlotkowska, who was housing 13 Ukrainians, told me that her family’s resources were thinning, with three boys of their own to care for. To help cover her bills, she was applying for a government program that provides about $9 a day for every refugee hosted.

Kosowicz is also concerned about nonwhite immigrants to Ukraine. When the exodus began, Kosowicz’s organization started receiving reports of such people being beaten or harassed as they attempted to flee the country and enter Poland. Numerous videos of these encounters have circulated on the internet. Some Polish university dorms and stadiums have rejected refugees without Ukrainian passports, as have volunteer buses transporting people to other European countries farther west. Some Polish households have declined to take in nonwhite immigrants who fled Ukraine, or asked guests to leave after discovering that they were not ethnically Ukrainian.