I went to a volunteer meeting at Jewish Family Service, the organization that hosts the Refugee Resettlement Program. The meeting was specifically for Friendly Match volunteers, those of us who befriend a refugee family and help them, not only with their English skills, but with cultural acclimation, showing them around the city and anything else a family needs. Some of the volunteers, like me, work with Burmese refugee families who come from refugee camps in Thailand. Some of the Friendly Match volunteers work with Iraqis, who are the other set of refugees who are being resettled in San Diego. We got into a lively discussion comparing the two kinds of refugees.
The Burmese have fled a civil war that has been going on since it began in 1949. Originally, the Karen were fighting for independence. Since 1976, they have modified their needs and are fighting for federal representation, rather than an independent state. Many Karen fled across the border into Thailand and live in temporary housing in refugee camps. They end up languishing there for years. My family, the Phans, lived in the camp for 15 years before the United States granted them asylum and flew them to San Diego. The four youngest children were born in the camp. Even though these children are Burmese, they have never been to Burma. They actually associate more with their tribe, Karen (pronounced with the accent on the last syllable as in kaREN). They speak Karen, and have Karen customs, Karen clothing, and eat Karen food.
Camp conditions are crowded, with very little of anything to go around. Families sleep on mats in small huts. The camps were built years ago as temporary shelters for the fleeing refugees. There is an abundance of people, but not anything else.
Relations between the United States and Burma have improved in the last few months, with Hilary Clinton making a visit there earlier this year. She was the first representative from the United States to visit Burma in fifty years. A few weeks ago, the head of the Karen and many of his lieutenants sat down at a table with some Burmese officials and shook hands. These are huge developments for my Phan family and Karen people all over the world. I asked Sonny, the 15 year-old, if he was going to go back to Burma (knowing full well that he had never been there) now that it looks like relations are stabilizing. He said he wanted to go for a visit, but not to live there; that he would rather live here, in the U.S. I asked why and he said that there is more here. I asked, “More what?” He replied, “More food.” That made me think of how camp life and life in San Diego are so different. Sonny expressed that a very basic need, food, is better taken care of here than what he was accustomed to in the camps.
The Iraqi refugees come from very different circumstances. They, for the most part, were middle class or upper middle class folks who have been displaced by the U.S. invasion in 2003. They may have fled internal strife that was a direct cause of the U.S. invasion. They did not leave looking for political or religious asylum; they fled a war-torn country caused by a foreign power aggressively invading with tanks, artillery and troops. They were granted asylum by the very country that had invaded theirs.
Jewish Family Service and other organizations are given money from the US government to settle the refugees. If I heard right, they are given $1,100.00 per person. With this money they have to find an apartment for the family, furnish it with everything from curtains to cutlery, from toilet paper to toys. Understandably, they shop frugally and depend on donations of furniture and household items. The coordinators told us that the only donations they do not accept are linens and mattresses. They always buy new towels and bedding for the families. In fact, they are mandated to provide new beds. And they have to provide frames and box springs, not just mattresses. Even though they know that most of the Burmese families don’t use box springs and put the mattresses on the floor, they are still required to provide frames and box springs. The volunteer coordinators explained that with the small grants they get per family, they try to hold some of the money back so they can provide cash aid at intervals in the eight months they work with each family.
The coordinators said that when the Burmese refugees walk into their apartment for the first time, they go around touching everything in awe, asking, “Is this mine?” “Is this ours to keep?” Coming from virtually nothing, they are astounded that the (used) furnishings, the (donated) clothes, the fridge full of food is all theirs. It is such an overwhelming welcome for a family that has been uprooted from all they know, and landed in a country that is so foreign to them.
The Iraqis, on the other hand, walk into their (drab) apartment, with (mismatched) furniture, old clothes and cheap towels, and are disappointed. They don’t want to be here; they want to have the home they fled, the life they left behind. Now they are forced to find their way in the very country that caused them to become refugees. It is a completely different mindset for them.
When I first joined the Friendly Match volunteer group, I was given the choice to work with Iraqis or Burmese. I was told that the Iraqis mainly needed help with job placement skills such as how to write a résumé, how to prepare for an interview, etc. The Burmese needed help with English, and how to assimilate. I chose to work with a Burmese family, and wanted one with lots of kids. I’m so grateful that I was placed with the Phans.
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