There’s a new trend emerging at the US-Mexico border: thousands of Chinese migrants and asylum seekers have arrived in the last few months.
“So the word is out, right?,” Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat, said to Axios. “If you can get to our southern border, you have a pretty good shot at getting in, and it has changed the demographics.”
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that at least 4,300 Chinese undocumented migrants have been apprehended crossing the southern border in the past five months. That’s double the number over the last five years and a 700% increase.
The reasons for the spike? Fear of Xi Jinping’s regime in China and the fallout from COVID-19.
Bob Fu, president of the Christian nonprofit ChinaAid, which advocates for human rights in China, speaking to Axios, gave three reasons for this uptick: Deterioration in human rights conditions and religious freedom in China, a rollback of President Trump’s border policies, and social media posts of successful crossings leading to a bandwagon effect.
Liang Zai, a professor of sociology at SUNY Albany who studies Chinese migration, added “The damage to the Chinese economy compared to four or five years ago is just so devastating for low-skilled workers,” he said.
The journey is an arduous one, but the trends continue towards higher rates of migration for Chinese nationals.
