By RACHEL COLEMAN
• Leader & Times
More than a decade ago, Liberal absorbed its first big influx of refugee immigrants — South Asian people originally from Vietnam and Cambodia. Drawn by the prospect of the hourly wages at National Beef Packing Co., many settled in Liberal and stayed for the long run. The 2010 U.S. Census lists the Asian population of Liberal as nearly 3 persent.
An increase in refugees from Burma might cause that number to creep higher, says Lewis Kimsey, refugee coordinator for Kansas Social and Rehabilitation Services.
“What you experienced in Seward County 10 or 15 years ago was similar to what has started in Dodge City and Garden City,” he said.
That should be welcome news to long-time residents of Southwest Kansas, Kimsey noted. Unlike the nomadic culture of people from Somalia, for example, “who think nothing of putting an air mattress in the car and driving to Minneapolis to see extended family members, the Burmese are stable immigrants for the receiving communities,” he said. “They tend to be very family-oriented and steady in terms of working and staying in one place.”
Many Burmese are also highly educated people whose lives were interrupted by political unrest, or ethnic and religious persecution in their home country.
“Across Kansas, we’ve got medical doctors who are slinging hamburgers, people with degrees who work as janitors,” Kimsey said. “It’s a major adjustment for them, when you consider whatever lifestyle they had in the good part of life in their native country.”
In Garden City, more than 500 Burmese refugees have settled in to rebuild that good life, says Velia Mendoza, the refugee coordinator at Garden City Community College.
“The Burmese people we have seen are very good workers with good skills,” she said.
Mendoza works closely with human resources departments among the county’s largest employers with the goal of helping refugees put together the basics for life in the United States.
“We want to get them employed and get them out of that public benefit system. We want them working and speaking English and driving. It’s really a matter of helping them find the resources.”
Many Burmese do just that at GCCC’s adult learning center, said director Hector Martinez, who views his new students as the face of opportunity for the region.
“If we help them, they’re going to stay here, work here, spend their money here,” he said. “For me, the question is, how can I invest in them so that they in turn invest in this community. In the end, it’s good for everybody.”
Martinez pointed to the way Burmese resettlement has impacted Garden City’s real estate market.
“They pay their rents on time. They don’t like loans,” he said. “And now, we’re beginning to see many Burmese people saving up to buy their own homes.”
Liberal’s longstanding South Asian immigrant community has supported two Asian markets, a Buddhist temple and local traditions, such as the dragon dance and Thai dancing at the yearly International Festival. Children of Asian refugee immigrants have graduated from Liberal High School, often in the top 10 percent of their senior classes. Such accomplishments are the long-term results of successful refugee immigration, Kimsey said, and a possibility for Liberal’s future.
In the past, Kimsey recalled, “state and federal funds supported special programs at Seward County Community College. If the numbers [of Burmese] stabilize to where there’s a sufficient number of people in the community, those agencies would consider supporting something like that again.”
The possibility sounds good to Seward County Community College’s director of adult education, Stephanie Christie. Refugee services at the SCCC-ATS Colvin Center are classroom-structured, focusing on English as a Second Language, GED certificate study and testing, and preparation for the U.S. Citizenship test.
“Frankly, we’ve outgrown our center. A lot of our classes happen on the main campus, because this center is very small,” she said. “I love watching Myla Regulato, our ESL instructor, work with her morning class. She’s got Somalian, Guatemalan, Burmese people all in there together. It’s crowded. But what she does is just amazing.”
In Garden City, Mendoza witnesses the same process as refugees wrestle with the English language, and the challenges of life in the U.S.
“They want to be American,” Mendoza said. “We need to be receptive.”
Kimsey, too, views the presence of refugees in Kansas as a situation that merits help and understanding.
“I don’t know that, at 50, I could pick up and move halfway around the world into a place where I didn’t know the culture, the language, the morays,” he said. “I have to give these folks credit.”
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