A child outside a Christian church in Umpium Camp.

A playground in Tham Hin.

Waiting for the volleyball game to begin.

A cow herder and his cattle in Nupo Camp.

Playing under a house.

Launching a kite in Umpium.

In Nupo Camp, a street with shops and tea houses.

Bicycling in Tham Hin.

Watching television in Nupo.

A family shop.

A game of takraw.

A young woman learning to sew.

A woman weaving underneath her house in Umpium Camp.

Exchanging a few words before an information session.

In Tham Hin camp, shortly after September 11th, two newborn twins were named “Osama” and “Bin Laden” and according to a caseworker, the family’s case was subsequently rejected by DHS. Who knows, it might be unfair to assume that their misfortune had anything to do with the twins’ names. Reading about name-based discrimination in places like France, where someone called “Muhammed” or “Abdullah” would probably think twice about submitting a CV with a real name at the top, makes me wonder what life will be like for Karen refugees with names like “Sylvester Stallone” or “Peter Pan” when applying for jobs and attending school in the United States.

Building a new house in Umpium Camp.

A house in Tham Hin Camp.

Children playing in the street between their houses, Nupo Camp.

A child waiting on his porch.

A grandmother and her grandchild in the living room of their bamboo home.

A house in Umpium Camp.

A private kitchen.

A typical toilet in Nupo Camp.

Sandbags function as fire extinguishers in case of a fire.

Children playing between the stilts supporting their house.

Umpium Camp.

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Walking home, Nupo Camp.

1. Inter-organizational communication and coordination: trying to ensure that the primary goal of I.C. (providing accurate, consistent information to refugees about the U.S. Resettlement Program) remains the absolute priority, while also satisfying individual organizational needs and interests.

2. Staying on top of rumors circulating around the camps so that misinformation can be immediately corrected. Also, adhering to a sort of “do no harm” approach whereby each organization pays diligent attention the effects of I.C. presence in the camps in order to ensure that the I.C. effectively and positively addresses the situation at hand.

3. Ensuring that the interpreters we use are adequately proficient in English, Burmese and Karen speaking and comprehension, in addition to having a thorough understanding of standard procedures for interpretation.

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Below are some of the primary fears, rumors and misconceptions that have been consistently voiced, particularly in Mae La, Umpium, Nupo and Tham Hin camps, over the past several months:

1. “If I do not apply for the U.S. resettlement program I will be sent back to Burma.”

Although the future for those remaining in the camps is currently uncertain, due to the temporary nature of each individual camp, permission from the Thai government, and the politics involved each year in determining refugee caps and quotas for the U.S. Refugee Program, no one will be sent back to Burma solely because they decided not to apply for U.S. Resettlement.

2. “If I am a male and I decide to resettle in the U.S., I will be forced to fight in the army and will probably be sent to Iraq.”

With respect to Selective Service registration, the same rules apply to male refugees as apply to male U.S. citizens. Every male between the ages of 18-26 must sign a Selective Service registration form before departing for the U.S., and this has been the root of much concern and hesitation on the part of refugees deciding whether or not to apply for resettlement. Many people think they will be immediately sent to the front lines in the Iraq war, and decide not to apply for that reason alone. The truth is that before anyone can fight in the U.S. army they must be a U.S. permanent resident and speak and understand English at a proficient level. Our efforts to clarify that the Selective Service is not the army but rather an emergency reserve in case of a governmental decision to institute a draft are ongoing.

3. “I want to resettle alone, but I heard that going through the process alone would put me at a serious disadvantage.”

Everyone is given equal treatment throughout the application process, right through their arrival in the United States. How well individuals or families are able to support themselves depends on many different factors. For example, a family with two parents and two children might be better positioned to pay the possible cost of higher education for the children than say, a twenty year old resettling by him or herself would be positioned to pay for his or her own education in addition to working to meet basic living requirements.

4. “I cannot resettle in the United States because I do not speak English.”

The majority of refugees resettling in the United States do not speak or understand proficient English when they arrive, but this does not prevent adults from getting jobs or school-aged children from enrolling in school. English classes are offered by resettlement agencies and ESL courses are offered at most public schools.

5. “After the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the government will change and refugees will no longer be able to resettle in the U.S.”

Barring a military coup or some other totally unprecedented change in leadership, the result of the 2008 election will not have an immediate effect on how many refugees are admitted to the U.S.

6. “I am worried that my children might be trafficked if we resettle in the U.S.”

While there is no guarantee that this will not happen, the instance of child trafficking in the United States is extremely low compared to other countries around the world.

7. “I heard that no matter how hard I work in the U.S. I will never be able to move up the financial ladder because of rampant employer discrimination against refugees.”

For most refugees the primary obstacle to climbing the social and financial ladder is not discrimination but rather a lack of English language proficiency.

8. “I am afraid I will be lost or stranded on my way to the United States.”

Before refugees leave the camps, IOM gives everyone a bag full of all the documents they need to get through the airport safely and smoothly. Stateside, staff from resettlement agencies await refugee arrivals and ensure that no one slips through the cracks.

9. “I can’t resettle until I finish school in the camp.”

People assume that life will be much better in the U.S. for those who already hold a high school everyone who is enrolled in school in the camps will be able to immediately enroll in public school upon arrival in the United States, and by receiving a U.S. diploma will be able to avoid all of the hurdles (e.g. the possible need to take a G.E.D. exam) associated with program incompatibility and English language requirements for the pursuit of higher education in the U.S..

10. “If I can’t pay my medical bills I will be sent back to a refugee camp.”

First of all, stateside resettlement agencies are there to help refugees with things like paying bills; once a refugee arrives in the U.S., they will be able to work with their resettlement agency to figure out the best way of meeting all their financial needs. Secondly, no one, under any circumstances once they have resettled to the United States, will be sent back to a refugee camp. For refugees, resettling in the United States means breaking all ties with the country of origin and adopting the U.S. as your only state. In other words, refugees cannot be deported because without the United States they are stateless.

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Other more outlandish rumors are less widespread, but still remain a cause of concern for some; things like, “America takes refugees in order to use the old people’s bodies for dog food” or “American hospitals will take out refugees’ internal organs to sell when they go in for treatment.” On a lighter note, some refugees have gotten the false impression that Arnold Schwarzenegger or George Bush will be there to greet them at the airport when they arrive.

Based on my experience over the past two months, the single most problematic rumor, and probably the most complicated one to explain, has to do with how much financial support refugees can expect to receive once they arrive in the United States. The reason it is so complicated is that how much support you receive depends on a wide array of factors, many of which cannot be identified until you have arrived in the United States. These include:

1. The size of your family.
2. How many of your family members are eligible to work.
3. Whether or not anyone qualifies for disability or social security benefits.
4. Whether or not children in the family are of public school age (5-18, or in some cases up to 21).
5. Where you live, and the policies of your particular state.
6. What kind of funding (match grant opportunities, etc.) are available through your resettlement agency.
7. Whether or not someone in your family receives health insurance benefits through their employer.

In contrast to other potential resettlement countries, like Norway or Canada or Australia, the United States offers little in the way of governmental support for refugees. Each resettlement organization provides one month of financial support to cover basic living and transitional expenses like housing, transportation and food, while working with newly arrive refugees to find employment and take advantage of any governmental support available, the length and amount of which, again, depends on many different factors. Across the board, the primary goal for refugees resettling in the U.S. is to get a job and develop self-sufficiency as soon as possible. For some, this is not an attractive option. A few weeks ago, someone asked me, “Why do refugees have more rights in Europe than they do in the United States?” Perhaps what they meant was why do refugees in Europe receive more “benefits”, but the word benefits was interpreted to me as “rights”. Regardless of why the question came off as it did, it is an interesting distinction, and I think many people do equate financial benefits with rights and freedom in a place like the United States.

UNHCR registration happened several months ago in Mae La, the largest of the Thai-Burma border camps with a (largely Karen) population of over 45,000, and resettlement agencies in the U.S. are currently inundated with new arrivals. The last waves of eligible refugees are still being sent out of Tham Hin. Tham Hin residents who were rejected by DHS due to material support restrictions are now finding new opportunities for resettlement in Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands because of a recent agreement from these places to reconsider options for material support rejection cases.

UNHCR held two registration pushes of two weeks each in Umpium and Nupo camp in July, and OPE will be traveling there for interviews during the next two months. As of now, it is difficult to accurately assess how much of the interest in resettlement during the recent registration periods in Umpium and Nupo was the direct result of Information Campaign. An informal raise-of-hands survey conducted at the beginning of each of our information sessions told us that the majority of those in attendance were information junkies who were coming to two, three, four sessions in a row. It is difficult to account for the trickle-down effect that inevitably follows our presence in the camp. The campaign continues through consistent meetings with camp committee leaders, a standard FAQ to be distributed among camp leaders and NGO stakeholders, and informational posters in Karen and Burmese along with a centrally located message board in each camp. OPE will be back for another round of information sessions before the first round of prescreening interviews in Umpium and Nupo camps.

Underneath the intricately woven bamboo overhang of a small restaurant, I am facing out toward a panoramic view of lush rolling mountains patterned intermittently with brown rice fields. It is the end of June and so the rice has just been planted. The tiny grass-like beginnings of what will later serve to sustain an entire village seem to be lodged inside the underskin of the earth. Exposed dirt against tropical greenery is a shock to one’s predictions up close, but from where I sit the combination of it all looks more like a quilt than a scar. Between me and the mountains a group of teenaged boys are playing. Clad in soccer shorts and colored jerseys they are maneuvering their feet with skill in a game like hackisack played with a woven bamboo ball. To my left, several older men are playing volleyball. To my right an older woman is selling fresh pineapples and avocados to passersby. The packed dirt expanse before me is alive with little kids running around with kites and stone-faced determination.

The sky here is a billowing presence. In the course of a day the color and temperature of the place changes vehemently every hour, and whether the colorful umbrellas that everyone carries serve to protect them from the rain or from the sun is a matter of minutes and inconsequence. The houses are not markedly different from those in the village nearby. The kites the children fly are made of tailored plastic trash bags, the volleyball is half deflated, and the fruit being sold was actually smuggled in by a relative lucky enough to make it safely outside and back into the camp. Despite much physical beauty, there are many loud clues about where I am.

I am in Umpium camp, one of the nine official refugee camps currently functioning along the Thai-Burma border. Until August I will be working with the International Rescue Committee’s Overseas Processing Entity on an information campaign designed to give refugees accurate information about the process of applying for resettlement and the realities of permanently relocating in the United States.

For refugees, there are usually three main options outside of staying forever in a camp. These options are known as “durable solutions” and include repatriation back to the country of origin, local integration in the country to which they were forced as refugees, and permanent resettlement in a third country. The ongoing situation for people fleeing Burma is such that no option but the third is presently viable. The actions of the SPDC have been enough for the United States to automatically recognize all members of the Karen ethnic group in Burma as refugees. Regular and systematic economic, physical and sexual abuse on the part of the Burmese Army has resulted in tens of thousands of displaced persons, some still inside Burma and others escaping across the border into Thailand. The journey into Thailand is long and terribly dangerous: those who attempt it face not only the natural dangers of the jungle like malaria, dengue fever, and deadly animals, but also a strenuous trek across Thailand’s northernmost mountain range and the ongoing danger of violent attacks.

The first big wave of refugees from Burma in to Thailand came in 1984, and many of those people are still waiting in the border camps. It was not until 2005 that the Thai government officially recognized displaced individuals within Thailand as refugees. The decision came with the condition that anyone wishing to be considered an official refugee must make their way to one of Thailand’s official border camps immediately to obtain an official registration document and status. Many people missed this deadline and aside from a few trickling exceptions, the door of opportunity has not opened again. For unregistered refugees, the only real option now is to wait. And thousands are waiting, for the Provincial Admissions Board to give the go-ahead for a substantial new wave of refugee registration in Thailand.

Unregistered individuals living in the camps are living there illegally. These include new arrivals and anyone else who missed the 2005 registration deadline. Currently, unregistered refugees are not eligible for most of the benefits, like rations, that are afforded to officially registered refugees living in the same places. Many sneak out of the camps to seek illegal employment in surrounding towns, and some even travel as far as Bangkok in search of work or education.

A man named Arthur* approached me at the end of a recent information session to ask about his case. He was a political refugee from the Aung San Suu Kyi wave in the early 1990’s, who like many others in the Burma border camps did not register on time with the UN. Like the others, Arthur was very smart, very industrious, and very much at the end of his rope. He was a tall, slender, well-dressed man approaching fifty, and his composure while he plead with us to think of alternative solutions became quickly but subtly compromised by the threat of tears in his sullen eyes while he spoke. “I cannot stay here any longer,” he explained. “There is nothing for me here. No family, no rations. I cannot even get a job as an interpreter because I only speak Burmese, and not Karen. I am withering away here.”

I thought if I were in his position I would be conducting myself the same way: asking questions ad nauseam until I felt for sure that the annals of every able person’s brains had been explored and yielded no solution. Despite his persistence, there simply was no answer to give but “you must wait, I am very sorry.” Telling him that I wish it were up to me to make the decision only gave him hope that there was something I could do. Unfortunately in the camps the sometimes the opportunity for movement comes not from will power or intelligence or strength, but rather from politics and nothing.

And not all people wish to go. Despite the lack of traditional freedom that accompanies life in a refugee camp, a large percentage of refugees in Thailand do not want to leave. For many, staying in the camp means staying with a community in which you have invested your trust and your livelihood over a long period of time. But people’s reasons for wanting to stay are not always based in such realities. Rumors circulating around the camps range from the trivial to the absurd. For a time in Mae La camp, many would say, “I heard that if I go to America I would be devoured by a giant fish and then be eaten out of a can”. Others were simply unclear about what it does and does not mean for young males to sign a mandatory selective service form. “If I go to America my son will be shipped off to Iraq to fight” is a common reason given for deciding not to resettle.

Resettlement is not the best option for everyone. The choice to apply or not is one of a litany of difficult decisions refugees in Thailand currently face, and it requires time and careful consideration. At a minimum, we can give people accurate and consistent information about how to apply and what to expect, because the consideration they give to their choice should at least be informed consideration. The information campaign evolves every day alongside the ebb and flow of cooperation between key organizers. They are right that for those who can go, life will be hard in the United States. Not as hard, though, as a Karen in a can.

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*Due to the proximity of Thailand's refugee camps to Burma, continuing nearby violence and a history of SPDC interference in border camps, as well as the political nature of many refugee persecution claims, I have changed this man's name to protect his anonymity and will refrain in future entries from identifying anyone through writing or photographs.