A New Land, New Life: Burma Refugees Settle in Milwaukee

Take a city bus heading to Mayfair Mall, through the central city, and it will pass a Karen community located along N. 45^th St. Many Karen refugees from Myanmar, known as Burma, are building their new life in Milwaukee.

Na Paw Say Wah is one of the Karen refugees who is working hard to realize her dream. Say Wah came to Milwaukee with her family when she was 16 years old. Now she is a freshman at Milwaukee Area Technical College.

There are seven minority groups in Burma, and the two groups that are usually seen in Milwaukee are Karen and Rohingya. Karen people live mostly in the hills bordering the eastern mountainous region and Irrawaddy delta of Myanmar, primarily in Karen State. They are culturally and linguistically diverse.

Thailand, one of the world’s largest resettlement countries, built nine camps for refugees from Burma along the Thai-Burma border. The refugees escaped from their homeland because of violence and political conflict.

Say Wah lives in a house with her family. The living room is dim, but the walls are almost covered with photos. The people on the photos are Say Wah’s parents and her younger sisters and little brother.

“When I first came here five years ago, I couldn’t speak English, and I didn’t know anyone. I couldn’t even take the bus.” Say Wah said. She took seven classes a semester, and she went to tutoring center when she started in high school.

“We have to take ESL classes to learn English,” said Say Wah. “Language is our biggest challenge here.”

According to Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are approximately 120,000 Burmese refugees remaining in the camps in Thailand. Since 2005, more than 73,000 refugees from Burma are settled in the U.S. and 90 percent of them are in Milwaukee.

In 2011, a locally project aimed to help the education of refugees from Burma was established by Robert Heffernan. It is named “Burmese Immersion Project”, known as BIP. Heffernan is now the co-founder of the project.

“We think we should do something for these refugee kids. We just simply put an ad on the volunteer Milwaukee website for them, and you wouldn’t believe, great people answer that!” Heffernan said in an exciting tone, although it happened five years ago.

“Then we started meeting in somebody’s house, and we bought vans to drive children to the community based tutoring center” Said Heffernan.

Heffernan is a landlord in Milwaukee. Five years ago, a case worker from Office of Refugee Resettlement found Heffernan and asked him if he would like to rent his apartments to some refugees from Burma. Heffernan then noticed the children of his tenants usually get low grades on their schoolwork, and their parents don’t speak English. Therefore, he decided to help these children learn English and help the refugees to blend in the city.

BIP first began helping a handful of individual refugee children with their homework and English lessons. As the refugees from Burma increased, now they have over 50 students, and a completed project of ESL.

“The project is not governmental, or public, or religiously affiliated. We get checks from people monthly. I also spend $10,000 on the project each year,” Heffernan said.

However, as the English instruction developed in BIP, problems appeared.

“Usually, the kids in fourth and fifth grade speak the best English in the family, so their parents would rely on them.” Heffernan said. “For example, when they go the bank, to see the doctors, and deal with bills. Their kids become the translator.”

Say Wah is also a volunteer in the BIP tutoring center, she translates for Karen refugees.

“There will be more refugees from Burma come to the U.S., and language is obviously their biggest problem.” Say Wah said, “Some Karen refugees come here and are already 16 or 17 years old, but they don’t want to go to school because of the language barrier.”

One of Say Wah’s younger sisters, Eh Kee Lar Say Wah, is attending Washington High School of Information and Technology. Eh Kee Lar said her school life is hard.

“When we were in Thailand, we couldn’t speak English, and we don’t have so many resources to learn at school,” said Eh Kee Lar. “I am taking Math, English, and Spanish classes at school. I need to go to the tutoring center every day, and I don’t have time to hang out with other students.”

The education of the camps in Thailand is limited and interrupted, according to UNHCR. The textbooks they are using to teach are from several years ago.

“Luckily they are alive,” said Heffernan, “and their kids are not starving and traumatized. The kids in our project are doing well, they work hard and we love them.”

Say Wah is considering transfer to UW-Milwaukee after she studied two years in MATC.

“I am majoring in Business management, and I want to help the future refugees from Burma to build their life in Milwaukee,” Say Wah said.

-This is the first in a series of stories by Media Milwaukee reporter Qixin Xu on Milwaukee-area refugees.