There are many moving stories of how migrants have managed to escape a harrowing background and have managed to move to Australia and made a successful transition despite the many hurdles they may have faced.
One of those hurdles, of course, for many people who have become refugees from their homeland is coping with the need for learning English. In fact, one of the requirements for successful migration into Australia is to get a number of key documents translated into English by a NAATI accredited translator. That can be a daunting proposition when just getting hold of the documents you need in your own language is a challenge in itself!
One such success story is Burma born Tar Eh Paw, a member of the large Karen tribal group who live in Northern Burma and neighbouring parts of Thailand. Many Karen people have fled their homeland to safeguard their families or even just prevent being persecuted or killed. Tar Eh pew spent many years in a refugee camp in Thailand after fleeing her native village when it was burned down by the Burmese Army at the age of 3. She married a Thai boy at the age of 19, some of whose family had already migrated to places like Canada and Australia. After hearing about Australia, both Tar and her husband were interested in migrating here.
Tar, her husband and their four children applied to migrate and were eventually successful and have now become Australian citizens. Although Tar now works in a Canberra school her English still needs improvement by her own acknowledgement and one of her stated ambitions is to speak English much better.
Tar and her family are very happy with their new life in Canberra and have no wish to go back to Burma although they say they would like to visit Thailand to see family. They both say that one of the reasons for their successful transition has been the friendliness and help they have received from many people in Canberra.
Of course, Tar’s success story also owes its existence to many other people in the background, including the visa documents translations that would have been necessary to translate marriage, birth, employment and other documents that Tar and her husband would have had to produce as part of their migration application.
