Changing Faces of Immigration

Meet Z.S. He is a 28-year-old who has dealt with a lot of setbacks. He is a high school graduate whose parents are migrant workers. He has worked in a factory and on an assembly line. Last year he decided to try taking the walking route to America. Traveling through Mexico he faced the risk of deportation, gangs and robbers. After scrounging together thousands of dollars to pay a smuggler, he eventually arrived at Tijuana just south of the U.S. border.

Z.S.’s story may sound familiar, but it is not the one most often heard. Z.S. is Chinese. His full name is Zheng Shiqing, and his journey did not start in Mexico but in Yunan province in China. He arrived by plane in Quito, Ecuador, after traveling through Thailand, Morocco, and Spain. Attempting to enter Colombia, he was robbed of his money and phone at gunpoint, and returned to Quito.

Zheng Shiqing crossed the border from Ecuador to enter Colombia at the city of Tulcan. There he found some 100 local businesses serving hundreds, if not thousands, of weekly Chinese migrants making the same journey. Once he reached the coastal city of Necocli he could take a boat to the edge of the infamously dangerous Darien Gap. He crossed Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala before crossing into Mexica at Tapachula. He feared deportation and the gangs in Mexico more than the rainforests he had already crossed. He stayed in Tapachula long enough to save enough to pay a smuggler for a flight to Tijuana.

Zheng Shiqing is far from alone. In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2023, (FY 2023) over 28,000 Chinese citizens were met by U.S. Customs authorities, a tenfold increase over the previous year. Chinese immigration to the U.S. was low in the 1980s while China’s economy was booming. “UN data shows the number of people from China seeking political asylum in the US and elsewhere around the world has sharply risen during Xi’s rule – climbing from nearly 25,000 in 2013 to more than 120,000 globally in the first six months of 2023.” Monthly arrivals in the U.S. increased rapidly following China’s easing of Covid-19 restrictions. A high number of Chinese arrivals had previous residences in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, home of the Uyghur minority.

China is not the only surprise. In FY 2023, “There were almost 97,000 encounters with Indian migrants in the U.S.,” nearly a fivefold increase since FY 2020. The increase is attributed to borders re-opening post-Covid-19, oppression of Sikhs and other religious minorities in India, and the backlog in visa processing. Widespread success of previous Indian immigrants is also a factor in pulling more people to the U.S. Almost a third of Indians arrived via the Canadian border. FY 2023 also recorded the arrival at the southern border of 43,000 Russian immigrants.

Immigrants to the U.S. through Mexico had come primarily from Mexico and Central America. In FY 2023 for the first time, immigrants from these countries numbered fewer than half of the 2.5 million entering through Mexico. Along with the more distant countries noted above, migrants from Venezuela arrived in numbers exceeding those from China and India.

What attracts people from around the world, in the tens of thousands annually, to risk their money, their safety and their lives to travel to a country with racial prejudice, extreme polarization, gun violence, and anti-immigrant bigotry? “This increasingly global migration to America’s borderlands says something about the enduring power of the idea that America is a land of opportunity.” The U.S. is known on China’s version of TikTok as “the Big Beautiful.” This is an expression of what political scientist Joseph Nye Jr. called “soft power,” the ability to influence others without resorting to coercion. For the United States, soft power flows from its music, fashion, sports, media, and culture. The strength of the U.S. economy with its tight labor market is likely factored into immigrant decision-making.

Immigration to the U.S. is changing. As FY 2023 data show, this is no longer primarily a Latin America encounter. The growing numbers coming across the borders require enacting new policies and structures that recognize new realities. Legislation that recognizes moral and humanitarian concerns, international laws and agreements, and geopolitical interests must be on Congress’s agenda. Immediate action is required to manage current migration flows and eliminate case backlog that allows entrants’ status to remain unresolved for years.