Surprising effects of emigration

It seems that the US has recently upped its acceptance of Burmese refugees from a few thousand to 90,000. The result is that everyone has bolted for the camps to apply and interview. I can't blame them, but I've been abandoned in the final stretch of my survey. We are set to train the interviewers this weekend and conduct the interviews next week. If it doesn't happen for some reason, the interviews probably won't happen while I'm here. Who knows....

I think we have to wait and see who has gone and how long they stay. What is important to me is doing the best I can with this, and if it gets sidetracked by something completely out of my control, I won't be too upset. It is however frustrating trying to get everything together for this weekend when I half-way expect that it won't happen. But the more I get done now, the less I'll have to do later, no matter what happens in the end.

The relocation situation, as I've said before, is interesting. It really does strip the top tier of the refugee culture, especially now that the quota has been raised so much. I wish I knew what the people really thought about it. I think they view the US as a sort of utopia, but I think life will be very difficult for them when they arrive. It's only the land of opportunity for people with good English and a GED. If the situation in Burma were suddenly better I think many would be happy to just go home. I doubt they have much hope left for that though, and life as a legal person in the US is probably much better than life as an illegal in Thailand. Who knows.

I think it would be great it people in the US who have spent time here could somehow register on the internet, and refugees being relocated to the US could search for a sympathetic person near their new home. I'm not quite sure how that would work, short of US governmental involvement. Setting up the database would be easy enough (though securing it would be more challenging). Letting the immigrants know about it would be almost impossible.