I met Kyin Than's wife and sons on a Sunday morning in Bangkok.

It was good to talk to them.

It's good to meet his sons.

They were concerned for their father's health.

He had been ill earlier that year.

It was nice to be able to tell them that from what I had known, that Kyin Than was feeling better and feeling more healthy.

They made a big point for me to tell him that they were okay.

So it was nice to be able to take a personal message back and be able to look Kyin Than in the eye and say, Your sons and your wife say they're doing okay.

Thank you.

You know, they're looking forward to coming to see you.

But they told me they're okay For what little that does, it's nice to be able to do something to help people out who have helped you, you know, tell their story.

There's a lot of people waiting in refugee camps in Thailand already, upwards of, I think a half a million there, well over 100,000 people on the list waiting to come to the United States.

If you come from Burma today and you get signed up in the right way, you will be at the end of that list.

It's not enough that you're married.

It's not enough that they're your family, that you're what's your wife, your son's proving that does not bring them here.

There's a lot of paperwork to go through.

And many of the steps, the paperwork that needs to be filed for the Department of Homeland Security costs money.

One particular step cost $200 per application per person.

So he had to come up with $600 to even make the next step of the process.

That's not easy for somebody who's working maintenance at an apartment complex and making very little money of his own, sending whenever he can at least three or $400 back to Thailand for his family to use.

Burma is a country in Southeast Asia, borders India, Thailand and China.

It's a little smaller than Texas has about 52 million people.

Military government there.

An attempt to kind of rewrite history has changed.

The name of the country to Myanmar.

They've changed the name of what was the capital, Rangoon, to Yangon.

I think it's a desire to kind of put their stamp on things and have people maybe forget what used to be the local Burmese use Burma.

They use Rangoon.

And so we follow their respect, their wishes and follow their desire to use those names.

In a way, it's a political statement.

It's saying that the government is not the democratically elected government of the country.

And what right do they have to change those names?

The British gain control of Burma In about 1886, it was considered a part of India.

It was separated from India in 1937.

There was a movement in Burma during the Second World War to gain independence from Britain.

In 1948 the British gave independence to Burma and all the ethnic groups.

They are, they have to participate.

Take turns.

In 1949, my father, as the founder of the revolution, he tried to make peace and without success.

So it's like a kind of a... the Karen are trying to, let's see, rebel against the government in one way my father, Saw Ba U Ghi, he was the founder of the Karen Revolution.

He would like to make peace first step to to make peace and understanding between each other without success.

He didn't do he cannot do that.

And then all the Karens start to fight against the government.

He didn't feel like surrender to the enemy.

So they fought each other and got killed.

I was five years old.

I didn't know, but I was told by many people that there's a spy who informed the the enemy that he was there.

So he was surrounded.

The country kind of had a period of prosperity in the fifties.

In fact, it was considered the rice bowl of of Asia.

And then in 1962, a series of military dictators came to power, cutting off the country, isolating the country, eliminating people's rights.

It culminated in 1988 in a pro-democracy demonstration.

At least 4000 people were killed.

The leader of what became the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, she had been living in Britain, came back in 1990 to lead the National League for Democracy Party to victory in the elections that were held.

However, the military dictatorship did not allow her to take office and has held her either in house arrest or in prison for ten of the last 16 years.

In 2003, the United States passed sanctions against Burma.

So trade is extremely restricted.

The Bush administration has been pushing for the U.N. Security Council to take up the Burmese questions, but any permanent member of the U.N. Security Council can block that discussion.

And China has chosen to block that discussion.

No sanctions are ever totally effective because as long as there's money to be made, what you really do is give incentives to other countries to get around those sanctions or free voting entrepreneurs.

The ability to charge higher prices.

But usually sanctions bring some pressure to bear on the on the country if there's any form of democracy in sight.

The problem with sanctions in a autocratic country like North Korea or like Iraq was or like Burma is the leaders, if you just squeeze the poor and therefore sanctions don't necessary work.

But they're one of our only tools.

Well, the military government, many of these Burmese have fought against the military government, trying to establish democracy in their country.

And so they are considered traitors to their country.

If they are caught, they will be arrested, sent to prison.

Many of them would be executed or sent to the work camps and their families would be broken up if they're living with their families.

And it will bring hardship that way.

And then because of some of the unrest that have happened, some of the smaller villages have been displaced and have fled to Thailand for safety.

What about financial assistance and how how much are we going to help the refugee question?

How much are we going to help people either through the UN or through the United States, in helping them in these refugee camps in Thailand?

If we only can absorb a certain amount of even refugees into the United States or other parts of the Western world, what do we do with them while they're trapped in no man's land?

Do we give aid directly to Thailand?

Do we give it to the U.N. and and the U.N. monitor and have these camps?

If we do this, does that encourage more people to leave for economic reasons or an even necessarily persecuted Mae La Camp The houses are built up lining close to the main roads and we cannot see.

There is a house.

We can see that it's a hut many, many, many bamboo houses.

And sometimes we use to put thousands and thousands of people over there and we have schools four high schools and many elementary and some middle schools.

We have many teachers who work there as a volunteer teaching the children.

The refugee question in the United States gets caught up with the immigrant question, and the immigrant question gets caught up with the terrorism question.

Now, the immigrant question in Burma isn't illegal immigrants, it's refugees.

It isn't terrorism, because we haven't had any terrorists or any terrorist threats coming out of the Burmese population.

But many Americans who are anti-immigrant are hiding behind the terrorism question that the number one way that legal immigration is coming in right now is through refugee status, which means we have very few slots for other legal immigrants because it's mostly being taken up with refugees.

So from time to time, people want to shut down or restrict that refugee status so we can have a different immigration quota to allow some relief on the illegal immigration coming in from Mexico in other countries.

So one of our immediate battles every year is how to handle the refugee question and whether to change and tighten that refugee status.

Probably the most surprising thing as a congressman is having to learn more about international relations than I ever thought I was going to learn, partly because of the number of votes we cast, partly because we've had the terrorist attacks and then gone to war.

And then we have all these Bosnians here, the Burmese here, that number one place for Macedonians we have more where I guess we're second in people from Darfur.

And therefore you wind up having to deal with embassies with different questions that you never thought of as a congressman.

When I first ran, I just didn't realize the diversity I was going to get into in this issue.

The largest population of Burmese refugees is in Fort Wayne.

There may be larger populations of just Burmese in various population centers throughout the United States.

But in terms of people who have fled persecution, in terms of people who have been resettled because of their political views, where I had contact my niece and I said I would like to have a sponsor, and she got on the phone.

She talked to Diana Sowards, the Friends of Burma.

You know, Diana Sowards in Fort Wayne here?

and she said, Diana, I would like to sponsor my Aunt Diana right away.

Diana said, Yes, It's why we contact each other.

Bangkok and Fort Wayne for over two years, and she's my sponsor and still helping me.

So that's why I came to Fort Wayne, Neil and Diana Sowards, who live in Fort Wayne.

Neil's parents were missionaries in Burma, right before Ne Win took control of the country.

And so Neil has always been active in helping Burmese people.

And as the need for sponsors for refugees came up, they were the first to begin sponsoring Burmese to come to Fort Wayne.

And because Burmese are very community people, As more Burmese came to Fort Wayne, Burmese in outlying areas began moving to Fort Wayne to be part of that community.

So now Burmese living in Thailand and other areas as they get the opportunity to come to America, can choose where they want to go.

They know so many here in Fort Wayne.

They want to come to Fort Wayne.

1992-1993, when the first refugees came to Fort Wayne and there was a small group of 6 to 8 people.

After that, they would sponsor other people to come.

They would send word and other people, once able would come to Fort Wayne.

By 1998, there were 500 people.

People kept coming directly to Fort Wayne after that point.

But after 1998, you started seeing more people who had initially settled elsewhere in the United States and possibly settled in Canada, who made a second move to come to Fort Wayne, largely to be in their own community, to be surrounded by more people like themselves.

I recently interviewed Tin Maung Cho and he is.

He recently married Khin Mar Lwen and they married in Bangkok Thailand.

They were married for a couple of months and then Tin felt he had to leave because of the fact that he was very active in protests against the Burmese government.

So, again, there's that kind of fear for his life.

They really did get didn't get a lot of time to spend together.

There's uncertainty as to when they might ever reunite.

I was supposed to meet Khin Mar Lwin It was the bride.

I was supposed to meet her in Bangkok.

We made a phone call one day.

My driver is doing the talking as he knew the language required.

Khin Mar Lwin is not there.

I was frustrated almost immediately figuring, Well, here it goes, things aren't going to work out.

Well, Khin Ma Lwin had been deported within the week after I had arrived in Burma, along with six or seven other family members.

They'd been sent back to Burma after being picked up by Thai police.

She, her small children, her elderly mother all sent back to Burma and it could happen to them any day of the week.

As long as they're in Thailand.

They're so matter of fact about it.

When we talked to them, they were so.

Oh, yes, yeah, we were deported.

It didn't come out in an outpouring of, oh my gosh, we were deported.

And let me tell you what happened next.

This.

Yes, we were deported home.

What did you do when we got back?

Oh, how did you get back?

Well, we had to ask somebody to let us please use their phone.

And we talked about the children and us not having any money.

And yeah, they've done it before.

They've gone through it before.

And everybody knows somebody who's been deported.

You just have no rights in Thailand at all.

They're now conversing, you know, long distance.

He's singing Burmese love songs to her over the phone.

She would very much obviously like to be here.

She has two small children from a previous marriage.

The children ask, you know, why is mommy so sad?

Why does she cry all the time?

And you know what?

What answer can she possibly offer them?

It's it's it's heart rending.

You can't go two blocks without seeing monks on the streets, in stores.

You can't go two blocks or two kilometers without seeing two and three or four or more temples of some sort.

In the countryside, in the city, wherever you are.

Buddhism is highly respected by the government.

They treat it well.

They know how important it is to the people.

I met with U Thondara, who's a monk at the Dhammarekkita Temple, probably about four years ago.

U Thondara came to Fort Wayne as a missionary, which might seem strange in a city of churches and highly Christian area that a Buddhist missionary might be dispatched.

But with so many people living here now, Buddhist followers were concerned that people were not learning the right way to practice their religion, that they were becoming distant from it.

And so he and others have been sent here to work with the congregations to make sure that they follow the right path.

U Thondara lived in Fort Wayne for three years.

Then he returned to Burma.

Right now he's at a monastery in Sagaing, Burma, which is very close to Mandalay, in the middle of the country.

But I went to meet him, U Thondara took me to several temples and several monasteries around the area.

One of them we went to was the school where he had learned in early days of being a novice monk.

We also stopped in two different nunnaries along the way.

One of them all the nuns, probably about 30 nuns, gathered to hear him talk.

They had questions about America, and he was happy to tell them.

And they had more and more questions.

And he summed it up by saying, Well, in America, everything is opposite.

Whereas in America in the summer the trees are green.

In Burma, things dry up and turn brown.

And at night there's electricity.

Because in most cities in Burma there is not regular electricity at night.

Sagaing is an interesting area because while Buddhism pervades all aspects of Burmese life, nowhere does it.

To the extent that I saw in Sagaing, this area of probably 3 to 4 square miles where I'm told there are 80,000 monks and nuns living.

When we went to Shan State, we went to an area that was very popular with tourists from inside and outside of Burma as well.

The lake called Inle Lake many, many miles long.

I am thinking probably 20 or 30 miles long and ten, ten miles wide.

I think at some points it's fairly shallow.

Traditionally or historically, it had supported five villages.

Today there are 200 villages around the lake, people living on and right over the lake.

It's a water based community.

They survive by fishing.

They also have floating gardens made.

I think it's water hyacinth beds that are cut out, dried and removed.

They float and you can put earth and soil on them.

They're anchored with bamboo poles.

They actually float on the water.

You can walk a little bit on them and harvest the food in that area.

There's a lot more vegetables.

You notice more tomatoes in the food they grow about anything you can grow anywhere.

People use the water for every part of life.

You know, it's there.

It's they must have some health issues because it's the more people that are there, the more the water cannot be cleaned.

But nonetheless, people are washing their hair, brushing their teeth, using the water because it is the water source for the area.

Mae Sot is joined to Burma by a bridge called the Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge.

Some years it's more friendship, some years it's more like a bad marriage.

But there is a lot of commerce across the bridge.

During the day, people cross to sell and work.

You have to go through three Thai army checkpoints to get in there trying to contain the people to that area.

A lot more people around the bridge who not crossing legally.

There are people who live underneath the bridge, the children living underneath the bridge, barely surviving.

A group of men had brought over probably 50, 60 pieces of heavy wood furniture that they had brought across the river, hoping to sell in Thailand.

But a Thai soldier looked down, made a fairly quick gesture, and within minutes they were taking all of this furniture back to the boat and back across the river, maybe for another day.

The people of Burma really amazed me.

I known it was a hospitality based culture, a culture that just by their all their basic teachings for years, you know, has a need and requirement to give and offer hospitality to others.

And I felt that welcome almost everywhere I went in the country.

It's a different way of life.

It's a it's a you have fewer privileges.

You have be the economic or political.

You know, it's we live in a very plush existence here.

There are so many situations in the world that are gray and you don't know whether you should leave this side or that side.

And this is one of those where it's pretty clear that the people in charge are bad people who are not doing the right thing, and that to be aligned with folks who are trying to bring freedom and democracy and human rights to a country is the place that most Americans, I think would want to be.

There's should be a moral statement of what we stand for as a people.

And I believe that's the case in Burma.

They had a democratic election.

It was overwhelming.

And they thumbed their nose at it.

And as long as they continue to do that, we need to show that we don't approve of that.

And if we if we basically let Burma get away with that, they'll just be war.

The Burmese are an integral part of Fort Wayne.

And while not everybody may know them or recognize them, we're going to continue to write about them and tell their story because it's a very compelling story