How To Become an American

When Zar Ni Maung peers over his computer screen and out the window, he can observe the bustle on Market Street. Then he sees how hundreds of people hurry along this long, straight street which cuts through downtown San Francisco. He sees people from all over the world, chatting in every conceivable language, clothed in garments that normally characterize the streets of Mumbai, trails in the Andes, or the financial district of London. Nowhere else in the United States is the multiplicity of cultures so wide-ranging than in San Francisco. Despite the high number of immigrants, however, finding a refugee is more difficult than one might expect, at least one who is officially acknowledged under the American legal system. Such as Zar Ni Maung of Myanmar.

America! For centuries the land of aspiration for the oppressed and persecuted. Ever since the Europeans discovered the new world, people have flocked there for refuge. Religious dissenters from England, France and Germanic states, later democracy advocates fleeing persecution during royal restorations, Jews and political dissidents fleeing the Nazis, opponents of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc states, civil rights activists from South Africa, free thinkers fleeing from dictatorships in South America and Asia.

Now that so many people are fleeing to Europe and its governing bodies search helplessly for solutions to this challenging problem, it may be worth it to travel to a country that has more than 300 years of experience with immigration and cultural integration. What is found there when you speak with refugees, migration researchers, coast guards and asylum lawyers in San Francisco, Palo Alto and Miami, is anything but perfect. But many ideas, which are only now being conceived in Europe, have already been attempted in the U.S.A.; in reality, they have been hit or miss, but many solutions have been found through trial and error.

Escape From Halfway Around the World

Zar Ni Maung greets you with a friendly smile. He is about 50 years old, wears a simple plaid shirt and jeans. He sits in one of three small, very plainly furnished, 19th-century office buildings in the center of San Francisco, which actually withstood the 1906 earthquake. Today, a hodgepodge of small companies and agencies reside here. “Waxing, Massages and Natural Nails” is written in gold lettering on the foggy glazed door on the other side of the hallway. Zar Ni Maung’s agency is called Refugee Transitions.

The Burmese man is a refugee himself and officially acknowledged as such. But that is not as obvious as one might think: Hundreds of thousands do immigrate to the U.S.A. each year, many legally, but many illegally as well. But only the 70,000 people who were invited from other countries as official refugees can be counted. On top of that are an additional 30,000 asylum seekers who have somehow made it into the U.S.A.. How difficult it is to become an officially recognized refugee can be demonstrated by the destiny of Syrians who had hoped for admittance to the U.S.A. Twenty states and the Republican Party have recently denied admittance to all of them.

Zar Ni Maung’s story is long and tortuous like those of many refugees. He was born in Myanmar, when it was still officially known as Burma. In the ’80s, he studied in Rangoon and was active in the students’ democratic movement. In 1988 protests erupted, and the military dictatorship took drastic measures. Zar Ni Maung fled. Via London and then Accra in Ghana, he finally arrived in San Francisco.

Allowed To Live Where You Know People

Zar Ni Maung has always attempted to support the oppositional movement in his homeland from afar. But while living in the San Francisco Bay area, he has discovered a new task. In Oakland, only a bridge away, live dozens of his fellow countrymen who have struggled to make ends meet.

“Refugees from Burma have been brought here to escape persecution and crisis. They hoped for a better life in the United States. But instead they were neglected; they are caught in a cycle of poverty,” says Zar Ni Maung. Sixty-three percent of them are unemployed. Fifty-seven percent of all households with an average of five people have had to make it with less than $1,000 per month.

Zar Ni Maung wants to help them. His employer, Refugee Transitions, is a volunteer agency. Their services begin where state support for refugees ends.

Whoever resettles in the U.S.A. as an official refugee receives eight months of financial support. If they have relatives or friends who already live in the U.S.A., they may take shelter with them. The state then gives the hosts money so that they can introduce the newcomer to the rules and customs of the new country. Once the support period ends, the refugee is on their own.

Listening Instead of Asking

If they have no relatives in the city, they can get help from agencies such as Refugee Transitions. For 30 years, the agency has consisted of volunteer helpers. They consult with families, provide language courses, explain the bus system, help to open a bank account and look for the proper support if a problem goes beyond their capabilities and requires a school psychologist or trauma specialist, for example.

That sounds similar to the sponsorship programs that many engaged Germans have started for refugees. But the American model is considerably more professional.

The education for helpers lasts weeks. The volunteers learn how to overcome language barriers. They experience their clients’ culture and note the particularities of each. They are trained to listen and know how to react if the refugees recount traumatic experiences, such as the death of a child. They learn not to ask too many personal questions but to be patient and develop trust. The goal of the helpers is in any case not to stir up the past but to enable a good start for a new life. They want to convey to their clients that they can live here in security, and they want to liberate them from the isolation caused by the shock of living in a strange country and lacking language skills.

Zar Ni Maung supervises the family services. Additionally he organizes young people with a second program in the agency, called Community Leadership. It is based on the experience that children and young people acclimate themselves faster than their parents and have less difficulty with learning English. Therefore, the agency recruits youth who are successful in school and teaches them more about all things refugees would need to know in their dealings with bureaucracy. Then they themselves can spread knowledge in their refugee communities and support new students from their home countries as mentors at their schools.

That all sounds good and pragmatic. But is there not more to integration than practical advice? How do you teach the refugees the values of a new society? Zar Ni Maung hesitates and asks in turn: “You mean, how to be an American?” He laughs heartily.

On the way to Palo Alto his laugh still echoes as the suburban train rattles along to the south. By the end of this trip it will become clear what triggered his cheerful outburst.

Flat, horizontal terracotta buildings, connected by shaded arcades, in the center the Memorial Church: Stanford University in Palo Alto resembles a Spanish mission, and it has a mission. Here the future is made. Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Google — the founders of these companies studied here. The university and the surrounding city of Palo Alto is full of people who want to change the world.

Somewhat apart on the east side of campus, stands the massive Encina Hall. Built in 1891, the sandstone building towers with four stories over the low-lying structures in the center of campus. It was once a hotel; today the three-winged building houses the department of political science, among other things. In an office on the narrow attic level resides political scientist Jens Hainmueller, a dynamic man of about 40, in jeans and plaid buttoned-down shirt. His road bike is parked behind the door.

Hainmueller was once a professor at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology; at Stanford he teaches business management and macroeconomics. Additionally, he is a statistician with the characteristic tendency to prove the logic or illogic of various political measures by using numbers. Above all, however, Hainmueller and two of his colleagues head the Immigration and Integration Policy Lab at the university.

Reliant on No One

Hainmueller speaks quickly and with precision, the many years in English-speaking countries have caused some of his German vocabulary to slip, if not his grammar. Can he understand what caused Zar Ni Maung to break into laughter at the question of cultural values? The concern of so many Germans?

He gets it, he says; only in America does the question have practically no meaning. The expectations of refugees in society are entirely different. “The key to belonging here is: You have to work or at least try to work. You cannot live off the state. That is even more important than being able to speak the language.”

Many refugees are able to do that. “After 180 days in the U.S.A., 60 to 70 percent of them have a job,” says Hainmueller. They are often poorly paid, but they earn their own living. That way, the new arrival can attain acceptance and simultaneously promote the local economy.

Other researchers have come to similar conclusions. A high percentage of refugees can lead, for example, to higher wages for local workers. For one, refugees are over-proportionately entrepreneurs — which is comparatively easy in the U.S.A. As soon as their business is up and running, they need employees. Second, refugees will often take up jobs in which language is less important. The local workers who had previously occupied these positions are promoted, manage new employees, specialize themselves, which can in turn make the company more productive in general.

Conflicts Wear Down Misunderstandings

The many illegal immigrants from Latin America have it tougher. They make it as seasonal farmhands, domestic workers, or Uber drivers. “But even they can lead a relatively normal life in America,” says Hainmueller. “People acknowledge it when someone works hard and will hire someone when he shows that he can do something.”

But what do the established Americans think when many foreigners suddenly move into the neighborhood? Hainmueller has two answers to that question. The generalized answer: The openness to see if the new neighbors are offering something that might be better than what’s already here is much greater than in Europe — the fear of foreign cultures is much less. “So many different groups display their culture in public here. It barely shocks anyone,” says Hainmueller. “Obviously there are initial conflicts over resources when a lot of new people arrive. But a lot of people also means that there are a lot of moments for contact. That slowly wears down the misunderstandings over time.”

Finally, almost everyone experiences at some point the feeling of being a minority. That makes it easy to build minimal consensus. That means: How I live doesn’t affect anyone else as long as I can provide for myself.

Hidden Consensus

That brings Hainmueller to his second answer. It relies on a study he completed recently. The question was: What do Americans think about immigration? The answer: There is a hidden consensus that runs through all layers of society, despite the serious disputes in the debates over immigration in past years. Americans favor well-educated immigrants with highly qualified jobs. On the other hand, they have disapproved of immigrants who lack motivation to work, arrive without state sanction, or come from Iraq. The latter reflects the major security measures undertaken after the 9/11 attacks and two wars in the Middle East. “Americans don’t ask if immigration is good or bad for me. Instead they ask, is it good or bad for the country,” says Hainmueller. “Ultimately it rests upon the idea that the U.S.A. is an open society which offers everyone the opportunity to improve your standing, and you must simply perceive it as such.”

Whoever has seen the bored young men in German refugee shelters join the children’s tables just for activities such as painting with watercolors, can directly understand the principle of “work first.” At least for the train ride back to San Francisco.

There awaits Karen Musalo. She offers a sharp, opposing viewpoint. The motto “each should be free and do what he wants” forgets that each person has a history. And this history makes it impossible for many people to simply start anew.

Musalo is a lawyer and has taught for many years at Hastings College of Law at the University of California. The meeting is taking place back in the center of the city. Next to the pompous city hall stands the McAllister Tower. Built in 1929 in a Neo-Gothic style with many art deco elements, the 24-story building was originally a Methodist church with seats for more than 1,500 on the bottom floor and a hotel above. Since 1978 it has housed the law faculty, with the hotel transformed into student housing. Musalo receives us on the fourth floor in a lavish corner office.

Her dark eyes shine beneath her locks of hair. One immediately senses the authority that she has achieved in the 30 years of service in court where she has fought through the most difficult asylum policies. Her opinion on Washington’s refugee policy is clear: “The resettlement program is mostly a tool for foreign policy.” The president decides how many refugees the United States will receive each year, with an even distribution from five distinct world regions. “These are hand-picked people who are allowed to come.” Therefore, Bhutan leads the list of most important countries of origin, followed by Myanmar, but not Syria. Don’t many also come from Iraq? “Sure. But the security check lasts so long that the yearly quotas are not fulfilled at all.” At least there is some kind of structured admittance process for these kinds of refugees.

But it is entirely different for those who attempt to reach the United States by their own means. To deter them, the government has built a fence up to seven meters tall along the 650-mile-long border to Mexico. Around 18,000 border agents patrol with helicopters, drones and ATVs. To avoid them, a dangerous route has to be taken through the desert. More than 300 people have died in the past year trying to make the journey.

Of those who make it, only those who can prove justifiable fear of persecution are received, based on race, religion, nationality, identification with a specific social group or political opinion. Sexual abuse has also been accepted for a few years as grounds for asylum. Simply living in a dangerous country is not enough, however.

The Guardian recently discovered what’s really at stake here. It reported on the cases of three young men from Central America, who had fled criminal activity there. But because general criminal activity is not acceptable grounds for asylum, the men were turned away. Each of the three were eventually murdered in their home countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Despite the rigid regulations, millions of people find their way into the U.S.A. “Because it is so dangerous to climb the fence or walk through the desert, many people try to make it by boat,” says Musalo. Now the U.S.A. finally has its own Mediterranean — on the East Coast of the continent.

America’s Mediterranean

In Miami, Florida, the gleaming white boats of the Coast Guard rest at a barren dock on the backside of Miami Beach. In a six-hour rhythm, they crisscross the waters between Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas. The images shown by the commandant look like they came from the European border control agency Frontex: Sailboats listing full of people, ancient fishing ships whose bellies have been packed with people for hours.

The boats arrive at night from the Bahamas or Cuba, the crossing costs between $2,000 and $10,000, depending on the benevolence of the boat’s crew. “We capture these kinds of boats almost every day,” says one of the skippers. Not quite 25 years old, muscles steely, hair buzzed short, cap tilted casually from his forehead. His seamen are even younger. “But we don’t find all the boats. If someone out there runs into motor trouble, the current will push them into the North Atlantic.”

The rescued immigrants are registered on board. Then it is decided right there at sea by the accompanying officer of the immigration authority whether or not they have a right to asylum. If no reason is apparent, rejection. Haitians and Dominicans are immediately returned to their country, their boats destroyed. For Cubans, there is an exception. If they place one foot on dry land, they are allowed to stay. But increasingly people are coming from entirely different world regions, Chinese for example, who can more easily obtain a visa for the Bahamas than for the U.S.A. Even they barely have a chance.

Karen Musalo in San Francisco criticizes this practice of quick evaluation for asylum, as the result is that no one can fully understand the urgency of these people.

Refugees Hide Themselves Away

“For example, the woman from Afghanistan: When she wanted to enter the country at an airport, the border officers noticed that her papers weren’t correct.” Consequently he said to her, she needed to formulate a well-founded fear, then she could stay. “She said: I am afraid of my neighbor.” In reality she had been raped by a group of men. But to say that out loud, to a stranger in particular, was impossible for her, and again a second time when she was interrogated by the asylum officer. Only when her case went to court did she dare to tell her true story. “You see how difficult it is for refugees to tell the truth right there at the border,” says Musalo. And how difficult it is for the officers to arrive at a smart decision in a hasty process.

The Americans’ self-image of openness fails in reality as such. The casual idiom “to each his own” cannot function if people have to break taboos that exist in their own cultures. “There are unfortunately many things that people cannot so easily speak about: rape, particularly by men, incest, torture,” Musalo says.

There are likely many more refugees living in the U.S.A. than officially counted. People who have actually made it over the fence and are now considered illegal labor migrants, but in reality have actually fled from violence and persecution. People who don’t want to remember their traumatic experiences and find shelter in one of the many ethnic communities. “There are many people who we don’t know if they actually do have a well-founded reason for asylum,” says Musalo. Civil rights lawyers actually advise them to continue to hide. Whoever does not apply for asylum within one year of arrival will have to leave, no matter how good the reasons are.

What can then be learned from America in its dealings with refugees? That it is good to fundamentally educate those who help refugees to integrate into the new culture. That people integrate more easily when they are allowed to work, and that it is not so good to block the path to employment with too many regulations. And that the deterrence of refugees and swift dispatch processes can quickly lead to unjust judgments. Sometimes even deadly.