Surge of Burmese refugees come to Oakland, looking for community and hope

SAN FRANCISCO–Ba Shar seems adrift on a sea of his imagination, oblivious to the scenery that surrounds him. He is standing on the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time in his life, looking out at the San Francisco skyline. The bridge’s red cables loom over his head and a thin mist covers the silver water below. A slow smile spreads across his face as he seems to come to, waking up to his new reality.

“Being here is like a dream,” he says. He pauses, and then chuckles. “I would never expect this would happen to me in my life.”

SAN FRANCISCO–Ba Shar seems adrift on a sea of his imagination, oblivious to the scenery that surrounds him. He is standing on the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time in his life, looking out at the San Francisco skyline. The bridge’s red cables loom over his head and a thin mist covers the silver water below. A slow smile spreads across his face as he seems to come to, waking up to his new reality.  

“Being here is like a dream,” he says. He pauses, and then chuckles. “I would never expect this would happen to me in my life.”

His journey began 13 years ago and has carried him from a small village in Burma to a Thai refugee camp to Oakland and this field trip to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Shar and the 13,900 other arrivals this year from Myanmar—the name the military gave Burma in 1989—represent a fraction of the refugees who have fled their homes in the nearly 50-year conflict between the military and the country’s ethnic minorities.

Their journey, says David Sein-Lwin, who left Myanmar in 1971 and today works with the newcomers, is dreamlike—filled with anxieties and expectations.

“When I first arrived, it was shocking because I had preconceptions from the movies,” Sein-Lwin said of his arrival in Pennsylvania. “I envisioned Indians and cowboys, “ he said. Instead, he found farms.

Shar expected to find a completely foreign land, but instead discovered a community of other refugees with stories similar to his own.

“I knew it would be a different country, a different culture,” he said, using Sein-Lwin as a translator. “But I found my own countrymen here, which made it a lot easier.”

These countrymen are Karen and Chin, the two largest ethnic minority groups in Myanmar. Many Karen and Chin people converted to Christianity before the government banned missionaries in 1964, according to Penny Edwards, a South and Southeastern Asian Studies professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in the cultural history of Cambodia and Myanmar.

In the past five months, the International Rescue Committee, a refugee advocacy organization, brought 110 Karen and Chin refugees to the Bay Area. The recent surge—the San Francisco organization has sponsored only 56 Burmese refugees in the last two years—is unrelated to the recent violence in Myanmar. Instead, it came after the Department of Homeland Security passed a waiver to the Patriot Act that granted many Karen and Chin refugees sanctuary in the United States, said Leslie Peterson, the deputy director of the San Francisco IRC. A clause in the Patriot Act bars anyone that provided “material support,” including housing, transportation or funds, to a terrorist organization from entering the United States as a refugee. In January the Department of Homeland Security waived this clause for armed wings of Karen and Chin resistance groups listed as terrorist organizations.

As they make new homes in the United States, these recent refugees can only watch the violence unfold in Myanmar.

“Right now we’re watching our country, which was one of the richest in the world, fall down to the bottom of the list,” Sein-Lwin said. “It’s very hard to watch when you can’t do anything about it.”

To accommodate the new refugees, the First Burmese Baptist Church of San Francisco, established in 1977 after the first wave of Burmese arrived, opened a sister church in Oakland. The latter helps the new arrivals adjust to life here using church funds and donations from inside and outside the church.

“We had a vision to start a new church in the East Bay,” said Lone Wah Lazum, the Oakland pastor. “This is an opportunity to reach out to people here, give assistance to people here, and also for these people to come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.”

For Shar, the church has also been a lifeline to education and work.

“When I moved here, I thought I would have a lot more difficulties,” said Shar on a recent Sunday after church. “But finding this place, being with my people, it made it better. Then I had a feeling that things would be OK.”

His connection to the church is clear. Shar disappeared after the service and arrived 10 minutes later wearing a bright blue parka given to him by the church.

“I had to go home because I forgot my favorite coat,” he said.

The story of the 45-year-old rice farmer’s quick flight out of Burma and then his long wait in one of the nine Thai refugee camps is typical, said Sein-Lwin.

Like others, Shar said, he was “caught in a tug of war” between the military that seized power in a 1962 coup and the Karen National Union.

When the military captured him, he knew he could be used to do the dangerous work of searching for landmines, so in 1984 he and two friends fled the military camp and ran for Thailand.

“We risked our lives, but we thought it was a good risk,” he said. “We were carrying ammunition and we just dumped it and ran for our lives.”

When Shar made it to the Maelah refugee camp on the Thailand border, he sent for his wife and mother-in-law.

“The camp is kind of like a prison,” he said. “You’re not allowed outside it, and there are security police looking, so if you’re caught they’ll send you back to Burma.”

Nonetheless, Shar tried to put together a life—working in construction for other refugees who traded with the villages outside, building his own home from woven leaves and bamboo and having four children, who attended a United Nations-run school. But the camp always felt unsafe.

“The military could raid at any time,” he said.

In early 2007, he heard the UN was accepting applications for refugee status, meaning Shar and his family could move to places like Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States.

“It didn’t matter where we went, as long as we escaped from refugee life,” he said.

The United States admission limits for East Asian refugees have been rising for the past five years, mostly because of the increasing number of Burmese refugees. Between 2001 and 2004, 22,500 East Asian refugees were allowed into the United States, compared to 28,000 for 2005 to 2006. Last year the ceiling was set at 11,000, but more than 15,600 East Asians were granted refugee status using a reserve pot. More than 13,900 of those refugees are Burmese.

“The opportunity to leave is like winning the lottery, so I had to go,” Shar said. “I knew that if I stayed, I would be a refugee forever. I’d have no hope, no freedom.”

A snag in Shar’s joy came quickly, however. Although his whole family would be allowed to leave, Shar and his three children would be sent to Oakland, while his wife and mother-in-law would go to Georgia. Shar’s mother-in-law was sick, so in order to get himself and his children out as quickly as possible, he applied separately from his wife and mother-in-law. Shar and his wife had different sponsors, which meant they were sent to different locations.

Shar and his children, ages 18, 16 and 14, left the refugee camp in July. His oldest daugher, 23, had left in June with her fiancé, who also filed a separate application. They are currently living in Virginia. Shar’s wife and her mother left at the end of September.

The San Francisco International Rescue Committee helped arrange a subsidized Oakland apartment, enrolled the family for food stamps and public school and gave Shar English lessons and help finding a job.

During his first week in Oakland, church members arrived on his doorstep with 50 pounds of rice and a gallon of cooking oil in tow and have continued to help with food, clothing, and education services. By mid-October, Shar was working at a jewelry factory in Oakland and had saved $312 for one-way tickets for his wife and mother-in-law.

After his initial adjustment, Shar is confident he will be able to succeed without assistance from his church and the IRC.

“Whatever other people do, I should be able to do,” he said with the stained smile of a man who spent much of his life chewing beetle nuts. “When I look at other immigrants and refugees, I see people have been able to improve their lives, so I believe I should be able to do that, too.”

Now Shar’s focus is on his children.

“For my future, I can’t do much, but my children can be more successful,” he said. “My main goal (in leaving the refugee camp) was to give them education”.

Sein-Lwin, who ended up in Pennsylvania and graduated from Penn State, says his own experience gives him faith that the newcomers will succeed.

“If you take any job, you can build on it,” he said. “You just need a job to get started. My parents look back at their lives now and say, wow, we’ve come a long way.”