It was 7 a. m. on a Friday when Wang Gang, a 36-year-old Chinese immigrant, was rushing to a daily task in New York City’s Flushing neighborhood.
When a prospective employer pulled up near the street corner, which houses a Chinese bakery and pharmacy, Wang and dozens of other men invaded the car. They were waiting to be selected to paint on the site of a structure, on a farm, as moving companies – anything worthwhile.
Wang had no luck, he waited another two hours. It would be another day without homework since he illegally crossed the southern border into the United States in February, seeking better monetary prospects than he had in his hometown of Wuhan. Porcelain.
The struggle of Chinese immigrants in Flushing is a far cry from the picture former President Donald Trump and other Republicans tried to paint of them as a coordinated organization of “military-age” men who came to the U. S. to build an “army. “” and attack the United States.
Since the beginning of the year, as Chinese newcomers tried to take their place in the United States, Trump has alluded at least six times to Chinese men of “combat age” or “of military age” and warned at least twice that they were forming an “army” of immigrants. It’s a topic of discussion that’s amplified in conservative media and on social platforms.
“They’re from China — 31, 32,000 in the last few months — and they’re all of military age and they’re mostly men,” Trump said at a crusade rally last month in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania. “And it turns out that you’re telling me you’re looking to build a small army in our country?Is that what they’re looking to do?
As Trump and others exploit the increased number of Chinese border crossings and authentic considerations about China’s geopolitical risk to further their political goals, Asian advocacy organizations fear that this rhetoric will inspire more harassment and violence against the Asian community. The U. S. has already noticed an increase in hate incidents fueled by xenophobic rhetoric from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric and blatant attacks on immigrant communities will undoubtedly only fuel more hatred not only against Chinese immigrants, but also against all Asian-Americans in America,” said Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI. The Affirmative Action Advocate said in a statement to The Associated Press: “In the midst of an already heated political climate and an election year, we know all too well how destructive that rhetoric can be.
Gregg Orton, national director of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, said many Asian-American communities “are plagued by fear” and some Asians still feel uncomfortable taking public transportation.
“To know that we could be in some other set of things like this, it’s humbling,” he said.
“THIS JOURNEY IS DEADLY”
Wang, who traveled several weeks from Ecuador to the U. S. southern border and then spent 48 hours in an immigration detention center before traveling to Flushing, said the idea that Chinese immigrants were building an army “does exist” among the immigrants he met. .
“They have to walk for more than a month” to do so, he said. “We came here to make money. “
Immigrants who spoke to the AP in Flushing, a densely populated Chinese cultural enclave in Queens, said they came to the U. S. to escape poverty and monetary losses stemming from China’s strict lockdown during the pandemic, or to escape the risk of incarceration in a repressive society where they may simply not speak or exercise their faith freely.
Many said they were still struggling to get by. Life in America is what they had imagined.
Since late 2022, when China’s three-year COVID-19 lockdown began to be lifted, the United States has noticed a sharp increase in the number of Chinese immigrants. In 2023, the U. S. government arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals at the U. S. -Mexico border. In December alone, the border government arrested 5,951 Chinese nationals at the southern border, a monthly record, before that number declined in the first 3 months of this year.
The U. S. and China have resumed cooperation to deport Chinese immigrants who were in the country illegally.
However, with tens of thousands of Chinese newcomers entering the U. S. illegally, there is no indication that they have attempted to build a military force or network.
It’s true that most of those who arrived here are single adults, according to federal knowledge. While knowledge doesn’t come with gender, there are more men than women on the perilous route, which involves taking a flight to South America and then embarking on the long, arduous adventure north to the U. S. border.
Chinese immigrants in Flushing said one of the reasons men come alone in greater numbers is the expense — more than $10,000 to cover airfare, lodging, local guides’ bills and bribes to police in the countries they travel to. Another factor may simply be China’s traditional policy of making family plans, which shifts the gender ratio to men.
There is also danger, said a 35-year-old Chinese man who gave his surname Yin only because he was concerned about the protection of his wife and children, who remained in China.
It arrived in Flushing at the end of April, five weeks after leaving Shenzhen in southern China. He had traveled through the noxious jungle of the Darien in Panama and through Mexico. The symptoms of the disease were still fresh: her hair was messy, her skin was tanned with fine wrinkles, and her once-white cardigan hadn’t been washed in weeks.
“This adventure is deadly. People are dying. Travel is right for women, it’s right for anyone,” Yin said.
He explained that, as the breadwinner, he had come alone, hoping that his relatives would be able to register him later.
“EVERYONE HAS A BETTER LIFE”
While some in China have opted to leave through investment systems or skills systems in evolved countries, those without resources are leaving for Latin America after being informed of social media posts about the adventure in the north.
Upon arrival, most of them disperse to big cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where well-established Chinese communities live, where they hope to work and start a new life.
The immigrants who came to Flushing said they came to the U. S. to flee China and fight on its behalf.
Chen Wang, 36, from southeastern China’s Fujian province, said he would travel to the United States in late 2021 after posting comments on Twitter critical of the ruling party. He was reprimanded by the local police.
“I’m afraid I’ll be locked up, so I came to the U. S. ,” Chen said.
More than two years later, he is still unemployed and living in a tent in the woods that he has made his home. He built a fence out of dead branches and dug a ditch so he could wash his clothes by hand and wash himself.
He said life in the U. S. hasn’t lived up to his expectations, but he hopes to one day unleash legal prestige so he can travel freely around the world and live an undeniable life in a cabin he built himself.
Chen, who briefly served in the Chinese military 20 years ago, said that on his adventure through Central America he met other people from the back end of Chinese society. He didn’t know anyone else who had served in the Chinese military and described his fellow Chinese vacations as if they were other people “in search of a better life. “
LONG HISTORY OF ASIAN STEREOTYPES
Certainly, U. S. intelligence officials are very concerned about the risk China’s authoritarian rule poses to the country through its espionage, military capabilities, and many more. Crimes have also been committed through Chinese immigrants, adding the arrest in March of a Chinese national who had violated a military base in California, but there is no evidence to support the claim that Chinese immigrants are coming to the United States to fight the Americans.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell referred to Chinese nationals as “economic migrants” at a public meeting in April organized through the National Committee on U. S. -China Relations.
China has said it firmly opposes illegal immigration, and police in that country have arrested others who tried to leave. Social media posts offering recommendations and guides on how to get to the U. S. illegally have been censored in China. Instead, the messages warn of risks along the way and racial discrimination in the United States.
China’s Foreign Ministry told the AP that Trump’s claims about an army of Chinese immigrants were “a glaring discrepancy of facts. “The Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment.
Steven Cheung, communications director for Trump’s campaign, said in an email that all Americans deserve to be involved in the entry of Chinese men of military age into the United States.
“These Americans were vetted or selected, and we have no idea who they are affiliated with or their intentions,” Cheung said. “This sets a damaging precedent for bad actors and potentially nefarious Americans exploiting Joe Biden’s porous border to send countless military-age men to America unhindered. “
The discourse about building an army is shared by many other conservatives.
“They’re men of fighting age, usually single, and you know, it’s not a coincidence,” Republican Rep. Mike Garcia of California said in an interview with Fox Business last month, nodding when host Maria Bartiromo He advised that immigrants simply later be used as “saboteurs” if Chinese President Xi Jinping “orders it. “
Sapna Cheryan, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, said claims about Chinese immigrants, made without evidence, are based on a long history of pervasive stereotypes that Asians don’t have a standing in the country, concepts that have fueled acts of violence against immigrants. Asians.
“If this rhetoric happens again, one thing we can expect is that other people will probably take this up and feel emboldened to engage in those heinous acts,” he said.
Li Kai, also known as Khaled, a 44-year-old Muslim from Tangshan in the northern province of Hebei, a city near Beijing, said he was concerned about Trump’s statements about illegal immigration and Muslims, but said he still had no choice to make. make your new life in the U. S. work.
He was one of the few who did this with his family. He has a bunk bed and couch with his wife and two children in a transitional home in Flushing, where he has placed an American flag on the wall.
Li said they fled China last year after attending a demonstration over the long-running local mosque that had been destroyed by police and that he feared he himself would be arrested. He chose the United States because it is a laid-back society, where its young people learned to recite the Qur’an.
He said all the immigrants he met on his adventure left China for the United States in an attempt to improve their life prospects, and he was grateful for the opportunity. When his kids are in school, he’s reading to get a driver’s license and then waits to locate an assignment and start paying taxes.
“Now that I’ve brought my circle of relatives here, I need to have a solid life here,” she said. “I’d like to pay. “