On a brisk, sunny December day, a small group of Burmese refugees gathered in the East Oakland house of Yan Aung to discuss how the Patriot Act and related immigration laws are being used to keep their compatriots out of the country. Aung is in his early 40s, and works nights in an automobile factory. He lives in East Oakland with his 35-year-old wife, San San Win, their two children and two other families. Because he works nights, he is still sleeping when others arrive, on a Sunday afternoon.

One of the first to come is U Maung Maung Latt (U is a title of distinction for an older man in Burma, similar to "sir"). Just shy of 60, dressed in Levi's and a rust-colored jacket, Latt is nearly the age of Burma's Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi; and certainly of an older generation than the others who have come today, those who were mostly students when Burma held its fateful elections in 1990. Latt's age, and his glasses, give him a certain technocratic authority; yet his expression is that of a man who's overwritten an easy grin with a more serious expression. The grin, though, is not entirely erased.

In Burma, he was chairman of a local branch of the National League for Democracy (NLD) -- in a town called Bilin. The National League for Democracy won Burma's 1990 elections (392 of 492 seats of parliament) but were denied their place in government. Maung Maung Latt, then, is an elected member of Parliament; so he is arguably one of the Burmese most directly disenfranchised by the current military regime. Latt went into hiding after the election, to avoid arrest and torture, and, later, to set up a government in exile to resist the power grab of Burma's military regime, the State Peace and Development Council.

Holding power since 1962, the SPDC (then known as the State Law and Order Restoration Committee) shocked the nation when its leader, General Ne Win, offered to retire and phase-in democracy in 1988. This led to the rise of the NLD and other democracy groups. When the NLD won the elections in 1990, the SPDC reneged on their promise, and one by one, as many of the NLD's leaders as could be found were arrested. San Suu Kyi had already been arrested while campaigning, and later won both the election and the 1991 Nobel Prize for Peace under house arrest in Burma's main city, Rangoon. She remains there today, nearly 17 years after winning the leadership of her country, all visitors banned but her doctor and her maid.

Since 2005, refugees have been barred entry to the United States as terrorists (or supporters of terrorists) if they once picked up a weapon as part of a group, or gave assistance to someone who did -- even if the weapons were used to fight a government the United States deemed illegitimate. Particularly affected by these rules were Burmese pro-democracy advocates like this small group, who, in student groups and as part of a wider ethnic conflict, have fought Burma's dictatorship or helped to facilitate that fight. They were the lucky ones who slipped in before the Patriot Act.

On Jan. 12, under pressure from refugee advocates and members of Congress from both parties, the Department of Homeland Security announced a change to its refugee policy. Many Burmese armed groups were placed on a list of organizations whose supporters would be exempt from the material-support designation -- even though the groups themselves met the Act's generic definition of terrorism. Explaining the change, Jarrod Agen, spokesmen for the Department of Homeland Security, said, "The U.S. has a long tradition of welcoming refugees and asylum seekers, but we want to keep security in mind. When we can be flexible we will, by looking at a group's past history."

After he went into hiding, Latt says, the NLD and armed groups worked together to decide on a way forward. In councils at Manerplaw in 1994, non-violent political groups met with armed student groups and armed ethnic groups -- some who had been fighting for independence since World War II, others fighting to rid Burma of its dictatorship and to restore a democracy that had never quite taken off after independence.

The NLD, since the elections, sat under the umbrella of the National Council for the Union of Burma, Latt explains. This is the broadest umbrella group that brings together the NLD with the Karen National Army, the People's Democratic Front and a number of other armed and unarmed groups alike.

Having been an elected MP and served as a member of Suu Kyi's nonviolent NLD doesn't seem a likely profile for a terrorist. But it is Latt's ties to the armed groups and a strict reading of a vague law, that could have posed a problem under the Patriot Act. Someone in his position today might fall under the category of having given "material support" to terrorism, depending on a number of factors. Tyler Giannini, associate clinical director of the Human Rights Program at the Harvard Law School, explained, "If you gave a family member a bed to sleep in for a night or a glass of water, and that person was part of an armed struggle resisting an oppressive regime like the Nazis, you could still be cited under the current laws as giving material support to a terrorist. By the definitions in place when I spoke to Giannini, in early January, George Washington would be defined as a terrorist, he said.

(Giannini didn't think someone like Latt, an elected MP from the NLD, would have as much of a problem as someone who actually fought and received weapons training, however.)

Yawning, Aung lumbers into his living room to meet the others wearing a longyi, a Burmese wrap similar to a sari, with a winter coat over it. The 45-year-old married his wife, Win, while fighting Burma's guerrilla war. When the SPDC denied the NLD members their place in parliament in 1990, Aung left Rangoon. "We fled to the border," Aung says, going back and forth between English and Burmese, "to meet the ethnic groups, and we prepared for government." First, acting on behalf of the NLD, Aung took part in setting up a government in exile, or "parallel government" as he and his wife call it, and assisting disenfranchised MPs. But in 1994, Aung was tapped to lead a small group of the People's Democratic Front, where he fought the Burmese regime directly in guerrilla combat in the jungle.

Win was just 20 in 1988 when she left home for weapons training in the jungle. She watched the regime kill thousands of her fellow students in 1988, a year before Tiananmen Square. She wasn't so sure the regime would honor the elections they promised, if they took place at all, and if they reneged she wanted to be ready to fight. Her parents were arrested after she left, but soon released. Going home after that, she knew, would mean more trouble for them; for they had been lucky to be released without incident. She remembers an aunt, a schoolteacher who was arrested for supporting a group of former students in their activism. In prison just a week, she was tortured so severely she was never the same. "When she get out," Win said, "she can only say again and again that her life is over and she just wants to be a nun."

Because it was easier for women to travel around the country, Win became a courier for the resistance. Eventually her cover was blown, and on three occasions she escaped from military authorities by just minutes. At first she hid out with apolitical relatives, but that became too risky for them.

Win met Aung when she was working in the NLD office in Rangoon, Burma's capital, in 1989. (Asked how they fell in love and if she found him handsome, she laughs and says, "I didn't notice that.") Deep in the jungle, amongst soldiers and ethnic resistance leaders all hoping for Burmese democracy, they married.

This is also when they met Jack LaMorte, a Bay Area native doing work in Thailand (who asked us to use an alias so as not to hinder his ongoing work in Burma). "I ran into one of Yan Aung's soldiers in Bangkok. They took me to the border, which we crossed -- over a dirt road in the mountains -- to get to their camp inside. I was fascinated by their struggle and began to hang out there. San San Win was pregnant, so I took her to the hospital while Yan Aung stayed in the camp, and Thunder was born there. After that, we were family." Indeed, when Aung and Win applied as refugees, LaMorte agreed to sponsor their application -- which meant they would end up in the Bay Area. Today, LaMorte and another Burmese refugee, Anil Verma, live in Aung and Win's house, which the couple bought two years ago. (Aung had the garage converted into an apartment for Verma.)

Likely, Aung and Win would have trouble -- possibly even being defined as terrorists, not just material supporters, like Latt -- if they applied for refuge in the United States today. Says LaMorte, "I am sure they asked Yan Aung about [his armed activities], I prepared his CV, which included photos of him addressing his troops. I think the fact that he led an insurgency made him a good candidate for asylum. But those were the good old days when we acted rationally."

While Aung works nights in the automobile factory, Win -- a recent graduate in accounting from Laney College -- is hoping to find an accounting job. Their daughter Thunder is now 12. The latest addition to their family is Nyein Chan, 5, first to be born in the United States. He goes to preschool and will begin kindergarten next year. They worry, say this group, about those unlucky enough to have been left behind before the Patriot Act made it so difficult to gain entry. Verma, who has acted as translator, organizer and co-host of the gathering, says that if a refugee application case has material support ties, it simply languishes. In some cases, it goes into a bureaucratic purgatory; no action will move it forward, no answer will come. "It's simple," Verma says. "People now are going to lie. Because we know we are not terrorists ... Our common goal," he begins, then pauses for the words. "We are not going to harm any other people. The SPDC is creating all the problems. We are not terrorists."

Verma works now for Asia Pacific Psychological Services, where he counsels newly arrived refugees and assists with their assimilation. He just started in January and is excited as he is the first there to speak Burmese or Hindi -- which he speaks in addition to a little Thai and a smidgen of Nepalese.

Aung, Win, Verma, Latt and LaMorte are also involved in Burma advocacy through the Burmese American Democratic Alliance (and their partner group for women, the Burmese Democratic Women's Association). They hold Burma Day events, where professors, resistance leaders and authors come to speak; they work with the U.S. government on Burma advocacy -- including close work with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo; and they keep themselves and their community informed on Burma issues and news. They also speak at churches, telling their stories, and answering questions about the refugee ban in the Patriot Act and how it affects Burmese today -- like Eh Wah, who wants to be known by her alias.

Eh Wah is a member of the Karen ethnic group. She fled to the border with her mom and two siblings when she was a little girl. Her dad had been killed by SPDC soldiers when she was 1. After crossing the border and setting up camp with other refugees in Thailand, her mom made the several-day journey back to their village when Eh Wah was 5. Her mom, too, was gunned down by SPDC soldiers. When she was older, Wah began doing intelligence and logistics work for the resistance. To make her way around Asia, ferrying new arrivals in and out of Thailand, relaying information, she bought a fake passport and assumed a Thai identity.

Wah says she told the truth at her refugee interview; not only did she support the fighters (mostly by cooking meals, she says) but she also assumed a false identity and worked on logistics for the resistance. In early 2005 she was denied asylum. Worse still, since she was already living in Queens, N.Y., her fake passport was confiscated and now all she had to identify herself was her student ID. "I can't even go to visit friends in other parts of the country," she says, "since you need ID to fly." Human rights groups have taken on her case, and she is appealing her denial for asylum.

The Jan. 12 changes to the Patriot Act suggested that no applicant for refugee status or asylum would be banned simply because they once gave "a glass of water" or a bag of rice or a bed to one of their friends or family members who were part of an armed group -- provided that the group they once supported could be deemed safe after a government review. Six of Burma's armed independence groups were on the list for waivers, as well as two non-Burmese groups. Days after the announcement, though, some refugee advocates were suspicious of what they saw as a partial but imperfect fix. The fix made it unlikely that someone in Latt's position, applying for refugee or asylum entry into the United States today, would have to worry about being barred. But what about someone like Win, who ran messages between armed group members and who had weapons training? What about her husband Aung, who led a platoon of the People's Democratic Front, an armed group not placed on the list? For now, their counterparts will likely continue to be banned -- though the changes do mark the political will to fix a widely acknowledged problem.

Some advocates, like Edith Mirante, an author who has focused on Burma for more than 20 years, wondered how the groups were chosen. "It does strike me as interesting that most of the Burmese groups are Christian," she said. LaMorte worried about the same thing -- that Christian groups such as the Karen National Army and the Chin National Front, also on the list, might be getting preferential treatment.

But Jennifer Daskal, U.S. coordinator for Human Rights Watch, says there are other reasons for some groups to be missing from the Department of Homeland Security's exemption list. "While the U.S. has waiver authority with regard to the material supporters of these groups, it will not exercise this authority until it has completed a terrorist assessment of that group." So if there is preferential treatment, as some have suggested, it does not mean other groups' exclusion is permanent. (But the only groups being reviewed now, says Agen, are the Hmong of Laos and the Montagnards of Vietnam. Both groups were automatically banned, because the law does not make allowances for having fought alongside the United States.)

The department also announced plans to expand its waiver authority so that it can waive in not just so-called material supporters, but also members of the so-called terrorist groups themselves, if deemed not to be a threat. This would mean that the groups would continue to be defined legally as terrorist groups, but then would be allowed refugee status or asylum through a waiver. This would allow people like Win and Aung into the United States, but it still represents a problem to Daskal and others.

"The real problem," says Daskal, "is that these individuals are labeled terrorists in the first place, coupled with the lack of waiver authority for members and combatants. The administration's proposed legislation solves the second problem by expanding the waiver authority, but does not touch the first -- the overly broad definitions of terrorism, which basically define any civilian who bears arms, even if engaged in a legitimate resistance movement, as a terrorist." Agen knew of no plans, he said, to change the definition of terrorism as it applies to refugees.