From Deseret News archives:
Burmese refugees flocking to Cache Valley
"Families will come," he says. "A lot of them."
Eh is one of about 300 refugees from Burma who have come to Cache Valley in recent months looking for work and a new life.
"I can see this growing rapidly in the next few months," said Katie Jensen of the English Language Center. "This is going to just go, go, go."
Refugee groups have targeted Cache County for its factories, many of which require heavy labor but little English.
Two years after a federal immigration raid depleted the work force at a meatpacking plant in nearby Hyrum, Burmese refugees have helped bridge the labor gap. Eh, who has worked at the plant for about a year, said he was trained to perform nearly every task so that he can oversee the 40 or so Burmese workers there.
"They don't need to speak English," Eh said.
As are most of the refugees coming to Logan, Eh is Karen, a small ethnic group that has fought for independence in Burma for nearly six decades. The world's longest-running civil war has forced hundreds of thousands from their homes in Burma and into refugee camps along the Thai border.
"Burmese soldiers came to our village," Ma Htwe Hla, who came to the United States with her husband and five children in 2006, said through a translator. "If we did not go with the soldiers, they would beat us."
Her family lived in a Thai refugee camp for eight years before coming to the United States. They first moved to Illinois but hopped a train to Utah after her husband heard about a job. He now works alongside Eh at the meatpacking plant.
"We feel fear to be here," Hla said. "We don't speak English. It is a different life. ... But we think about our children, their future."
Eh, who also lived in a refugee camp for eight years, said his time there was "like being in jail."
There, Eh learned some English, and so he has become the unofficial voice of a small but growing community.
He translates for other refugees at work, and he helps them with tasks around the home.
In a strange place, the refugees have found comfort in each other, Eh said. And through word of mouth, he expects more Karen in the valley in the coming months.
The influx has put some strain on the English Language Center, Jensen said.
"They came here totally unprepared," she said.
At the center, refugees are taught everything from hygiene to how to pay their bills.
"Our goal is to help them become self-sufficient," Jensen said. "We're getting them on their feet so that within the next few months, they're taking care of themselves."
"We feel happy," Hla told Jensen one night in early December. "One day we will help you."
E-mail: afalk@desnews.com
