The passport office in Rangoon, the former capital of Burma, is full of people waiting to process documents and many residents are studying foreign languages, like English and Chinese. The reason is millions of Burmese citizens are choosing to study and seek employment abroad because they can’t find jobs at home, or earn enough money to live if they do.

And, city dwellers aren’t the only ones pursuing opportunities outside Burma. Residents from rural villages in Mon State are flocking to Rangoon for language training classes and using the city as a base to search for overseas employment and education.

A Rangoon-based overseas employment agency manager claimed people are flooding to the city hoping to find jobs in foreign counties. She said that the number of migrant job-seekers increased dramatically this year.

“Now we are struggling to get airline tickets (for migrants), which has not happened before. We have to book the tickets in advance.”

She explained that Burmese citizens working abroad earn much higher incomes than those employed at home, leading to consistently high levels of migration.

In a recent interview conducted in Rangoon, a student originally from Bilugyun Island, near Moulmein, the capital of Mon State, said she had been in Rangoon for more than two years looking for employment abroad. She claimed that she does not have a specific goal for her future.

“First, I decided to learn English when I arrived in Rangoon. I planned to go Singapore for a job. Later on, I found it is inadequate to know only the English language, so I started learning Chinese and accounting. But now Hong Kong is offering jobs to nurses, so I may take a nursing course next,” she said.

Like her, many other young people are planning to migrate.

Exact figures regarding the total number of Burmese citizens living abroad are unavailable. In its April 2010 report, the Human Rights Foundation of Monland estimated 1.5 to 2 million Burmese migrant workers live in Thailand alone. That figure does not include students. Millions of Burmese migrants have also moved to Malaysia, Singapore, and other countries.

A study conducted in late 2008 by the Social Environmental Research Consultant (SERC) entitled “A Comparative Picture of Migration in Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand: Summary”, indicated Burmese citizens are struggling to make ends meet in their native land. Seventy-one percent of 708 individuals interviewed claimed they had migrated out of economic necessity.

SERC’s study also indicated increasing numbers of Burmese youth, well educated individuals, and students are opting to leave the country in favor of greener pastures abroad.  The survey highlighted the fact that of 370 individuals inside Burma interviewed by surveyors, who were chosen as subjects of this study because they had recently returned to Burma from abroad, 9% had previously studied at a university in Burma before leaving the country in search of work. Even having an advanced degree from one of Burma’s universities is not enough to guarantee Burmese citizens security, so many of the country’s youth are opting to escape an uncertain future by studying and working abroad.

Mi Nyein Chan is currently studying in Thailand. She could not attend university after she finished high school in Burma because of money issues, so she came to Thailand as an illegal migrant to find a job. She earned 5,000 baht a month working in a jade processing factory. She reported that most of her earnings were sent back home.

After one-and-a half years of working in Thailand, she went back to Burma to attend university.

“I dreamed of being a university student. That is why, I came to Thailand to earn money for some of my tuition fees but after I got into the university in Tovoy (her home town in lower Burma), I felt that university education there was not worthwhile to spend my time and money on, so I dropped it.”

Like many current would-be migrant students, Nyein Chan, spent several months in Rangoon taking English language classes to become eligible for entrance at an international university in Bangkok.

“My first objective for studying in Thailand is making money while I am receiving a quality education. As soon as I arrived, I worked to pay living expenses and tuition fees. Some days I could work and some days I couldn’t. I had to take a break [from university] in the first semester of my second year, because I ran out of money.”

After five months away from her studies, Nyein Chan re-enrolled in university after she found a job in a night bazaar tourist shop. She earns around 8,000 baht ($250 USD) a month.

“Although I earn a reasonably good salary, it is a night time job. I have to go to work from 4 pm to 12 am. After my job it is long way back my apartment. At night time, the sub way train [MRT] closes. I have to take two buses to get home. I normally go to sleep at 2 am. Waking up for morning classes is difficult, and I cannot focus much on the course material. I failed two subjects.”

Many scholarships are available for Burmese students who cannot support themselves, but she was not eligible because of poor academic performance.

“I am sure if I only focused on study I can do better. At that time, however, I was under pressure to pay the tuition fees and my living expenses.”

Despite financial difficulties, she remains satisfied with her choice to study abroad.

“When I graduate, I will find a job at a company in Thailand because I can earn more here.”

Claims that increasing numbers of Burmese citizens are opting to migrate for economic reasons come as no surprise. Burma’s economy, which is heavily dependent on rice, suffered greatly last year after mass flooding and crop infestation. The Democratic Voice of Burma online news-source claimed in an article published on July 20th that Burma’s rice exports had dropped 60 percent this year.

As well, the Burmese government’s Central Statistics Organization (CSO) has published statistics that rice exports fell from 750,000 tonnes in the first six months of 2009 to just 270,000 tonnes exported within the first six months of 2010.

As Burmese citizens struggle to survive and find employment in this failing economy, they are further hindered by their  government’s disinterest in dealing with the nation’s unemployment problem. According to official reports filed by the Burmese Government in the CIA Factbook, Burma has an unemployment rate of roughly 5%, which is on par with many western countries, despite the fact that the average reported per capita income of a Burmese citizen was $1,100 USD.

Dr Sean Turnell, an expert on the Burmese economy and Associate Professor of Economics at Maquarie University, pointed to what he called the Burmese Government’s “willful  economic mismanagement” when asked to comment on Burma’s official unemployment rate:

“Burma’s official unemployment rate is, quite frankly, an absurdity. We’re not even sure of what the country’s population is (as you know, it’s been nearly 60 years since a proper census was done), and the estimates for this vary by around 20% (the Asian Development Bank puts the population at about 58 million, the CIA at 48 million). So, as you can see, if this basic number is unknown (as are the numbers of people forced to flee Burma) – any sort of accuracy along the lines suggested by the Burmese regime is fanciful.”

In this nation where the current regime’s management of the country’s finances is described as “fanciful”, some are hoping for change after the elections set for November 7th.  But in this respect the future, at least according to Dr. Turnell, looks grim, as most of the parties competing for election have failed to outline a solution for Burma’s economic crisis.

Dr Turnell explained, “There are no proposals for genuine reform, and no assurances that the foundations of transformational growth are likely to be put in place (effective property rights, rational policy-making, a sound currency, a unified exchange rate, increased investment in human capital [health, education], etc). The state continues to take most of the country’s financial and real resources, and the foreign exchange it earns from Burma’s booming exports of gas to Thailand do not even come into the country. Stashed abroad in accounts that are only accessible to Burma’s ruling elite, they are kept from becoming the basis of the ‘game changer’ that they could be with respect to the country’s prospects.”

With no “game changer” in sight, it is unlikely that Burmese citizens will stop clogging airports, flocking to foreign language classes, and using their skills and higher education to find work abroad, anytime soon.