Arrests of Chinese immigrants illegally crossing US-Mexico border jumps 1,230% in January

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The Chinese Migrants Coming to America… Through Mexico - The Wall Street Journal Google Your News Update - WSJ Podcasts

Crossing the US-Mexico border has long been a goal for migrants from Latin America seeking a better life in the United States, but now a growing number of Chinese migrants are going through Latin America to get to the U.S. Wall Street Journal Chinese technology and society reporter Shen Lu...

www.wsj.com

The Chinese Migrants Coming to America… Through Mexico​

Annmarie Fertoli: Crossing the US Mexico border has long been a goal for migrants seeking a better life in the United States. But while many of them come from the American continent, one nation farther afield is growing as a source of migration, China. Since October 1st, US Customs and Border Protection agents have made more than 4,200 arrests of Chinese nationals along the southwest border. That's 12 times what it was in the same period a year earlier. And regardless of one's nationality, the trek northward can be dangerous and expensive. I'm Annmarie Fertoli from the Wall Street Journal, and our reporter, Shen Lu spoke to Chinese migrants for this story. I asked her why we're seeing a growing number of Chinese going through Latin America to get to the US.

Shen Lu: Yeah, it's pretty extraordinary. A lot of the Chinese people who are leaving China for the US through Latin America, they're from the lower classes of Chinese society and they're leaving for better economic opportunities and political freedoms as well.

Annmarie Fertoli: So are Chinese people with lower incomes the only group that we're seeing making this trek?

Shen Lu: They're not only group of people who are fleeing China. Those with means and resources and connections and social capital are leaving China through investments visas, through student visas, through work visas. People from lower income classes, they don't have the social capitals and means to enter other countries with the kind of visa that's required of them. So that's why they're taking this arduous, dangerous journey to the US.

Annmarie Fertoli: So you spoke to several migrants who did make this journey through Latin America. One of them was Lee Show Sen. What can you tell us about his story?

Shen Lu: Lee Show Sen is not a typical Chinese migrant who left China because his livelihood was destroyed during the pandemic. He actually had a fairly comfortable life in China. He is middle class, but he left because he felt, politically, it was increasingly suffocating under Xi Jinping's rule. He, himself was subject to censorship and surveillance. In 2019, Chinese authorities forced him to delete his criticism of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party on Twitter. And then he was taken in for questioning again in 2021 and 2022. So he decided to leave after his second detention. And he also wanted to create a good opportunity for his sons. He didn't want his sons, 16 and nine, to experience the kind of high pressure education in China's education system. And he also, in his words, doesn't want his sons to be brainwashed by the CCP. Here is what he told me, why he left China.

Lee Show Sen: I was leading my descendant, my son to a land flow with milk and honey, just like Moses leading his people from Egypt to the promised land of Israel. America is a promised land for me, for my descendant.

Annmarie Fertoli: So he saw this journey in biblical terms, really?

Shen Lu: I mean, it's telling how he was willing to sacrifice for his son's education. And that's something that's echoed by many migrants who came to the US through the same route.

Annmarie Fertoli: Okay, now let's talk about the journey itself. Earlier this year, Lee Show Sen and his son arrived in Ecuador, a country that lets Chinese arrivals enter without a visa. Then what?

Shen Lu: Yeah, so Lee Show Sen and his son flew to Istanbul, Turkey in early January, and from there they flew to Ecuador. He only brought his older son with him because, Johan, the older son, is old enough to make this journey with him. And he, himself was determined to leave China. Then they immediately got robbed in a border town in Columbia

Lee Show Sen: Cash, gone. My AirPod, gone. iWatch, gone. Even my new underwear and my coat, gone. And after that, my son was very frightened, and it's around the time of Spring Festival in China. So he want to go back to home. He want to go back to China. I think it is only the second country of this journey. We at least have five more country we need to cross. So he want to go home.

Shen Lu: So they lost a lot. And then it was also a very stressful experience for both the father and the son, especially for the son. When he was video chatting with his mom and a younger brother in China, it was around the Lunar New Year, the Spring Festival, family reunion time. And he was sobbing in the video and said, "I wanted to go home. I don't want to do this anymore." And here's what Lee Show Sen told his son. He said, "Freedom is not free. There is no return." Lee Show Sen also told me about a bumpy bus ride through Columbia. He shot videos through much of his journey and shared those videos with me.

Annmarie Fertoli: Okay. So along and arduous journey, and yet, through all of that, they did make it to the United States.

Shen Lu: Yeah, they tracked through the dangerous Darien Gap thought to be the most dangerous part of this journey. It's a very treacherous jungle connecting Columbia and Panama. And they passed eight countries by boat, by raft, by foot, by bus, by car, all modes of transportation. And they finally made it to the US in late February. They crossed the Rio Grande River and landed in Brownsville in Texas. They were immediately detained by border control, who later dropped them off at a migrant shelter run by a Catholic church in Macallan, Texas, where they stayed for two days before they boarded a plane to New York. Now Lee Show Sen and his son have settled in Albany where Lee Show Sen knew a pastor from his days in Thailand. That's why they went to Albany. And the son is enrolled at a public school in Albany and Lee Show Sen is taking English classes and trying to get a driver's license and is applying for asylum for him and his entire family, his wife and younger son in China. And he has a court hearing scheduled for October. And Lee Show Sen tells me that he had never been to the US before, but he always had this longing for the US.

Lee Show Sen: Yes, just like home, even my English not fluently, but still it's very familiar to me from the movie, from the television. So it's just like back to home.

Shen Lu: So Lee Show Sen's story is not very different from other migrants. It's a story about longing, escape, and displacement. It's a story all too familiar to the Chinese diaspora.

Annmarie Fertoli: Shen Lu, does the Chinese government have anything to say about this particular outflow of migrants through Latin America and into the US?

Shen Lu: They didn't respond to requests for this particular story. And the Chinese government generally doesn't comment on outflows of Chinese citizens to other countries, especially through indirect means.

Annmarie Fertoli: Shen Lu is a reporter covering the intersection of technology and society in China for the Wall Street Journal. To hear more stories about business and politics from the Wall Street Journal, ask your Google Assistant to play WSJ What's News podcast.

 

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[dbc]

I guess @beijingwalker is failing at his job of convincing people the US is doomed.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

I guess @beijingwalker is failing at his job of convincing people the US is doomed.

Anybody in France hacking their way through the jungles of SouthEast Asia to get into China?

 

[dbc]

Anybody in France hacking their way through the jungles of SouthEast Asia to get into China?

yes me, but China's awesomeness was too much for me.

 

[beijingwalker]

I guess @beijingwalker is failing at his job of convincing people the US is doomed.

US attracts fugitives and junkies, China attracts different kind of people

This is quite momentous: China is now the country in the world attracting the most scientists, the US is now experiencing a net outflow of scientists.

This is quite momentous: China is now the country in the world attracting the most scientists, meanwhile the US is now experiencing a net outflow of scientists. China now has a net inflow of scientists. In contrast, the US, which greatly benefited from talent inflow in the past, saw an outflow...

defence.pk

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

US attracts fugitives and junkies, China attracts different kind of people

This is quite momentous: China is now the country in the world attracting the most scientists, the US is now experiencing a net outflow of scientists.

This is quite momentous: China is now the country in the world attracting the most scientists, meanwhile the US is now experiencing a net outflow of scientists. China now has a net inflow of scientists. In contrast, the US, which greatly benefited from talent inflow in the past, saw an outflow...

defence.pk

LOL! This has to be one of the absolute lamest achievements ever...

Hundred of thousands of Chinese students come over to the US to study and then are forced to go back home due to immigration limits...and you are actually claiming this is part of an influx of scientists from around the world...

"The OECD credits more Chinese scientists returning to China for the sudden reversal in Chinese and American inflows."

 

[beijingwalker]

LOL! This has to be one of the absolute lamest achievements ever...

Hundred of thousands of Chinese students come over to the US to study and then are forced to go back home due to immigration limits...and you are actually claiming this is part of an influx of scientists from around the world...

They are not forced to come back to China, it's been this trend for quite a while that more and more Chinese students come back to China after they graduate overseas, not only form US, but from every country. and less and less Chinese students choose US to study year on year, this is neither forced, US is losing the appeal to in China fast, deny it as you will, but it's a hard fact.

 

[dbc]

US attracts fugitives and junkies,

The words on the Statue of Liberty read..

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

..we take refuse and term them into gems

They are not forced to come back to China,

..Trump chased these Chinese researchers out of the US.

 

[gambit]

US attracts fugitives and junkies, China attracts different kind of people

You guys need to keep your stories straight. All these yrs, you guys have been saying that without Chinese coming to the US, either as workers or emigres, US tech status would collapse. Now you are saying that only Chinese fugitives and Chinese junkies come to the US?

 

[beijingwalker]

You guys need to keep your stories straight. All these yrs, you guys have been saying that without Chinese coming to the US, either as workers or emigres, US tech status would collapse.

When did I say it? you are barking up the wrong tree, I never made such a claim.

 

[gambit]

When did I say it? you are barking up the wrong tree, I never made such a claim.

I did not point the finger at YOU. I said 'you guys'.

How many times did YOU GUYS brought up Wong Tsu, Boeing's Chinese engineer, in a thinly veiled charge that without him, Boeing would not be where the company is today?

New NASA Moon Rover Copies Chinese Mars Bot, Experts Claim; How Similar is VIPER to Zhurong?

New NASA Moon Rover Copies Chinese Mars Bot, Experts Claim; How Similar is VIPER to Zhurong? It seems like China is not always the copycat. Griffin Davis , Tch Times 02 November 2022, 08:11 am The new NASA moon rover copied the design of a Chinese Mars robot, as claimed by experts who are...

defence.pk

The Chinese Bayraktar

They are many times , it the western countries who wanted cheap imitation and China factories simply just produced according to demand of western customers. China factories are very practical. We produced items needed by export customers. No factories will produce item deem too expensive which...

defence.pk

...then Boeing wouldn't exist without Chinese engineer Wong Tsu. USA should thank China for Wong Tsu.​

Wong Tsu is just one example.

So yes, then, the PDF Chinese claimed that without Chinese, the US would not be the technological power it is today, now, the PDF Chinese says only Chinese junkies come to America.

The US do not need geniuses to come here. We just want the hard working and we created the social/political environment for it.

When the Soviets existed, it was policy that any scientist who came up with any idea or made any discovery must pass military review before his work can be published. Pyotr Yakovlevich Ufimtsev was one example. He passed review and was allowed to published his math. The result was the F-117 and to this day, internet Russians still tries to claim Russia was the 'father of stealth'. Your China followed the SU's policy. The inevitable result was that who knows how many Chinese came over and their hard work made the US the scientific and tech power we are today. The US have all rights to claim credit for where we are today, pal.

No, the US should not thank China for Wong Tsu. The US should take credit for Wong Tsu. The harsh truth is that China should thank US for Wong Tsu for giving him the opportunity to personally advanced, then for allowing him to return to China to make use of what he learned from US. What YOU see in China today? YOU should thank US.

 

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They are not forced to come back to China, it's been this trend for quite a while that more and more Chinese students come back to China after they graduate overseas, not only form US, but from every country. and less and less Chinese students choose US to study year on year, this is neither forced, US is losing the appeal to in China fast, deny it as you will, but it's a hard fact.

Most people would expect close to 100% of their overseas students to be coming back.
Anything less is pretty much a brain drain and not much to be proud of.

 

[beijingwalker]

Most people would expect close to 100% of their overseas students to be coming back.
Anything less is pretty much a brain drain and not much to be proud of.

Most means close to 100% , where did you learn your math? Most Americans now are of European origin, is this a wrong statement?