Groups of Burmese refugees — most of them from the Karen ethnic minority that has been the target of Burmese military oppression for decades — have been arriving nearly every day in recent months to start new lives in the city, according to aid workers.

On a recent evening, the arrivals gate at John F. Kennedy International Airport was in its usual state of chaos as women in African headdresses and paunchy men in cowboy hats swirled around a group of Burmese refugees huddled in a corner. Jamesteem Hla, 23, and his wife, Ku Paw, 26, who despite the chilly temperature wore sandals and flimsy nylon pants that left her legs bare to her shins, attracted only a few looks as their 2-year-old gleefully grabbed at a red fire alarm mounted on the wall.

Mr. Hla, in a donated blue sweatshirt, guarded their belongings: a rainbow-colored plastic sack with items salvaged from their hut in a Thai refugee camp, and a large flat bag of government documents.

For the moment, their exhaustion from a 13-hour flight was kept at bay as they watched the lively scene with wide eyes. “Happy” is one of the few English words Mr. Hla picked up at the refugee camp where he had lived most of his life, and he uttered it shyly as the small family prepared to step out into the cold of their first week in New York City.

Ms. Paw, Mr. Hla, and the baby, Hteenermoo, were not exactly pioneers. On the night they arrived at JFK, another family of Burmese refugees pulling a string of children in loose cloth turbans, flip flops, and matching sweatshirts had been led away by refugee aid workers. An earlier flight had deposited a different group that morning.

The number of Burmese coming as refugees to America has leapt more than 600%, to more than 1,300 in 2006 from 200 in 2003, according to the federal government’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. In 2007, the number of refugees from Southeast Asia, which usually includes a large proportion from Burma, was 7,619, according to the federal Refugee Processing Center.

The wave has launched Burma onto the list of top 10 countries from which refugees flee, along with the likes of Russia, Cuba, and Iran.

Some Karen have settled in smaller cities around the country, where churches, schools, and civic groups have jumped in to help them adjust. New York receives the most, however, with as many as 1,000 Burmese refugees settling here in recent years.

Many of the newest Karen arrivals are being scattered among some of the poorest neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx. While they are moving to a city of immigrants, where many of their neighbors are also from far-off places, the extreme changes — coming to the urban clamor of New York from the primitive conditions in Thailand’s refugee camps — are especially stark for them.

As they approached their new apartment in a rickety building near a rough public housing project in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, Ms. Paw said she struggled to picture what her new life would be like.

Collected from the airport by a pair of refugee caseworkers from the International Rescue Committee, Amanda McDonald and a Karen translator, Dah Thu Dee, the family had traveled in a rented van to their new home with a four other men from the same refugee camp. They were greeted outside by a large figure shrouded in a puffy jacket lounging on the stoop, a fellow refugee from Burundi who has been in New York long enough to pick up strategies for blending in.

Inside, Ms. Paw and Mr. Hla bounced the baby on the mattress of a new crib, her first, and studied the microwave. Then the three clustered around the caseworkers as they explained how to light a gas stove, what a fire alarm is, the importance of stuffing the shower curtain inside the bathtub, and how to flush the toilet.

The men snapped open garbage bags with concentrated expressions that were replaced with large grins at the presentation of a pair of electric rice cookers. In the refugee camp, rice had been cooked over campfires.

The refugee camp where Mr. Hla lived 18 years and Ms. Paw lived five years had no electricity, and water to serve 60 houses trickled out of a shared pipe only three hours a day, the refugees said. They lived in a one-room bamboo hut with a thatch roof shared with 12 people, and bathed outdoors. There was little work beyond gathering bamboo, as venturing out of the crowded camp was not an option, what with Thai police officers known for shaking down refugees lurking on the outskirts. On arrival night, the joy of new appliances began to fade as apprehension took over. Another difference between the refugee camp and their new home was the crime rate. In the camp, there was no crime except for an occasional fistfight among teenage boys, but their new neighbors had told them of thieves in the area who preyed on newcomers.

Still, even the shadowy, hardscrabble streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant couldn’t be worse than Burma.

Mr. Hla was too young to remember fleeing his village after soldiers tortured his parents, but Ms. Paw could not talk about her journey to Thailand from Burma without tears filling her eyes.

When she was 21, her mother died of disease. Her father was killed soon after; he was taken by the Burmese army and tortured over the course of two months.

Ms. Paw was later kidnapped by the soldiers, working for them as a porter until she escaped a few months later. She ran — alone — to the Thai border several miles away, eventually making it to one of the sprawling refugee camps that dot the area.

After breakfasting on Chinese takeout, the group set off for Manhattan the next morning escorted by a 19-year-old Amherst College intern who was still learning the subway system herself.

Ms. Paw, with Hteenermoo strapped in a sling around her shoulders, was wearing her sandals after discovering the brown sneakers the refugee agency left for her in the apartment didn’t fit. With no concept that the cool temperatures could correspond with the bright sunshine outside, she had also left a hand-me-down coat hanging in a closet.

A MetroCard lesson momentarily distracted her from her numb toes, but the whoosh of the train as it pulled into the station sent the whole group jumping backward with startled cries.

New threats seemed to pop out at every corner.

Commuters jostled them, and uniformed police officers triggered memories of their Thai counterparts. Ms. Paw clutched the baby close and took intersections at a trot, glancing fearfully at the buses and taxis that roared around her.

An escalator in Grand Central Terminal stopped her in her tracks, leaving her blocking a crowd of rush hour commuters as she stared at the moving stairs and gingerly stepped on.

At their destination, the IRC offices, they filled out a stack of forms for Medicaid and food stamps, and each refugee received a check of $196 to pay for a monthly MetroCard and food.

The generosity of their new home would only extend so far. The refugee agency, strained by a tight budget, would pay their rent, teach them a little English, and help them look for a job with a goal of making them self-sufficient by the end of four months. When they stepped out onto 42nd Street to head home, Mr. Hla turned his furrowed forehead up to marvel at the skyscrapers. The dazzling sight loosened his frown and led him to venture another English phrase: “It is wonderful to my mind.”

At that, even Ms. Paw, now snug in a pair of second-hand snow boots, was able to smile tentatively.