Permanent Residents Who Left The U.S. During The Pandemic Worry They Can’t Come Home

When the pandemic hit, Keri Smith and her family fled with what they could fit in their car. They spent the past 15 months in Canada, where she was born, at a family cottage in rural Nova Scotia.

Now that Smith and her husband are fully vaccinated, they’re ready to come back to their home in Northampton, Mass.

“I have my house; my kids go to school,” Smith said in an interview with NPR. “We want to get back to our lives. We are ready. And we can’t.”