Published Monday, July 23, 2012
Hser Nay Hei, center, meets another Burmese refugee and her daughter
at the Denison Job Corps. In 2011, more than half the refugees settling
in the Midlands were from Myanmar, formerly Burma. At left is Barb
Stratman, an OPS teacher who continues to help out her former student.
Hser Nay Hei came to the U.S. in 2008 in one of the first big waves of Myanmar refugees resettled in the United States.
For
decades, the oppressed ethnic and religious minorities fleeing from
Myanmar, also known as Burma, crossed into Thailand and lived in refugee
camps.
An estimated 100,000 refugees still live there amid concerns that Thailand will close the camps and return them to Myanmar.
The
U.S. began resettling those refugees in significant numbers in recent
years: nearly 17,000 in 2011, up from 128 a decade ago. Last year, one
in three incoming refugees nationally was from Burma, and more than half
of the refugees coming to Nebraska and Iowa were.
They are a
mixture of Karen, Karenni, Chin and Kachin ethnic groups and Burmese
Muslims persecuted for their religious beliefs in a country with
Buddhist, Christian and animist roots.
Omaha's reputation as a
hospitable place for Karen and other Burmese also has drawn “secondary
migrants,” meaning refugees who resettled initially in other U.S.
cities. A resettlement worker with Lutheran Family Services estimated
that between 3,000 and 5,000 such refugees are here.
Lacey
Studnicka, development officer for Lutheran Family Services, said
Nebraska is now resettling fewer Burmese: 427 last year, down from 528
the year before. The latest group being resettled are Bhutanese refugees
from Nepal.
Contact the writer: 402-444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com
http://www.omaha.com
No comments:
Post a Comment