NEW YORK — It was 7 a.m. on a recent Friday when Wang Gang, a 36-year-old Chinese immigrant, jostled for a day job in New York’s Flushing neighborhood.
When a potential employer stopped near the corner where a Chinese bakery and pharmacy were located, Wang and dozens of other men surrounded the car. They expected to be chosen to work on a construction site, on a farm, as transporters – anything that paid.
Wang had no luck, even though he waited another two hours. It would be another day without a job since he illegally crossed the US southern border in February, seeking better financial prospects than he had in his hometown of Wuhan, China.
The daily struggle of Chinese immigrants in Flushing is a far cry from the image former President Donald Trump and other Republicans sought to paint of them as a coordinated group of “military-age” men who came to the United States to build an “army” and attack America.
Since the beginning of the year, as Chinese newcomers have tried to gain a foothold in the U.S., Trump has alluded to Chinese men of “combat age” or “military age” at least six times and suggested at least twice that they were forming an “army” of migrants. It’s a topic of discussion that is being amplified in conservative media and social platforms.
“They come from China – 31, 32 thousand in the last few months – and they are all military age and most are men,” Trump said during a campaign rally last month in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania. “And it seems to me that they are trying to build a small army in our country? Is that what they are trying to do?
As Trump and others exploit the rise in Chinese border crossings and real concerns about the geopolitical threat from China to advance their political goals, Asian advocacy organizations fear the rhetoric could encourage more harassment and violence against the Asian community. Asians in the US have already seen a rise in hate incidents fueled by xenophobic rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric and blatant attacks against immigrant communities will undoubtedly only fuel more hatred not just against Chinese immigrants, but against all Asian Americans in the U.S.,” Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, said in a statement to the Associated Press: “Amid an already inflamed political climate and election year, we know all too well how damaging this rhetoric can be.”
Gregg Orton, national director of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, said many Asian American communities remain “gripped by fear” and that some Asians still feel uncomfortable using public transportation.
“Knowing that we may be facing another round of this is quite concerning,” he said.
Wang, who traveled several weeks from Ecuador to the U.S. southern border, then spent 48 hours in an immigration detention center before heading to Flushing, said the idea that Chinese migrants were building military forces “doesn’t exist.” among the immigrants he met.
“It is impossible for them to walk for more than a month” for this purpose, he said. “We came here to make money.”
The 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 financial losses from China’s strict lockdown during the pandemic, or to escape the threat of imprisonment in a society repressive where they could not speak or exercise their religion freely.
Many said they continue to struggle to survive. Life in the USA is not what they imagined.
Since late 2022 – when China’s three-year COVID-19 lockdown began to be lifted – the US has seen a sharp increase in the number of Chinese migrants. In 2023, US authorities arrested more than 37,000 Chinese citizens at the US-Mexico border, more than 10 times the number from the previous year. In December alone, border authorities arrested 5,951 Chinese citizens at the southern border, a monthly record, before the number saw a downward trend during the first three months of this year.
The US and China recently began cooperating again to deport Chinese immigrants who were in the country illegally.
However, with tens of thousands of Chinese newcomers entering the US illegally, there is no evidence that they attempted to set up a military force or training network.
It’s true that most of those who came are single adults, according to federal data. Although the data does not include gender, there are more men than women on the dangerous route, which typically involves catching a flight to South America and then making the long, arduous walk north to the US border.
Chinese immigrants in Flushing said one reason men may come alone in greater numbers is the expense – often more than $10,000 per person to cover airfare, lodging, payments to local guides and bribes to police in neighboring countries. throughout your trip. Another could be China’s long-standing family planning policy, which has skewed the gender ratio towards men.
There is also danger, said a 35-year-old Chinese man who only gave his family name, Yin, because he was worried about the safety of his wife and children, who remain in China.
He arrived in Flushing in late April, five weeks after leaving the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. He had traveled through Panama’s dangerous Darien Gap jungle and Mexico. The signs of the trip were still fresh: her hair was messy, her skin was tanned with fine wrinkles and her previously white cardigan hadn’t been washed in weeks.
“This trip is deadly. People die. The trip is not suitable for women – it is not suitable for anyone,” Yin said.
He said that as a breadwinner, he came alone, with the hope that his family could join him later.
While some in China have chosen to leave through investment schemes or talent programs in developed countries, those without resources have left for Latin America after learning through social media posts about the journey north.
Upon arrival, most of them are spread across large cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, with well-established Chinese communities, where they hope to find work and start a new life.
The immigrants who arrived in Flushing said they came to America to escape China, not to fight on its behalf.
Chen Wang, 36, from southeast China’s Fujian province, said he decided to come to the US in late 2021 after posting comments critical of the ruling party on Twitter. He was warned by local police.
“I was afraid of being arrested, so I came to America,” Chen said.
More than two years later, he is still unemployed and lives in a tent in the forest that he has made into a 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. has fallen short of his expectations, but he hopes to someday gain legal status so he can travel freely around the world and live a simple life in a cabin he built himself.
Chen, who briefly served in the Chinese military two decades ago, said he encountered mostly people from the bottom of Chinese society during his journey through Central America. He did not know anyone else who had served in the Chinese military and described his Chinese companions on the trip as simply people “looking for a better life.”
It is clear that US intelligence leaders have serious concerns about the threat that China’s authoritarian government poses to the country through its espionage, military capabilities and more. There have also been crimes committed by Chinese immigrants, including the detention in March of a Chinese citizen who broke into a military base in California, but there has been no evidence to support the claim that migrants from China are coming to the US to fight against Americans. .
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell called Chinese citizens “economic migrants” during an April town hall meeting organized by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
China has said it strongly opposes illegal immigration and police have arrested some who tried to leave. Social media posts offering advice and guides for arriving in the US illegally have been censored in China. Instead, there are posts warning about the dangers along the way and racial discrimination in the U.S.
China’s Foreign Ministry told the AP that Trump’s claims about the existence of a Chinese migrant army were “a blatant mismatch of facts.” The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.
Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, said in an emailed statement that every American should be concerned about military-age Chinese men crossing into the United States.
“These individuals have not been vetted or screened and we have no idea who they are affiliated with or what their intent is,” Cheung said. “This sets a dangerous precedent for bad actors and potentially nefarious individuals to exploit Joe Biden’s porous border to send countless military-age men into the United States completely unrestricted.”
The army-building narrative has been shared by many other conservatives.
“They’re mostly single, fighting-age men, and you know, that’s not a coincidence,” said Republican Rep. Mike Garcia of California during an interview with Fox Business last month, nodding when the host Maria Bartiromo suggested that immigrants could later be used as “saboteurs” if Chinese President Xi Jinping “directs this.”
Sapna Cheryan, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, said the claims about Chinese migrants — made without evidence — are based on a long history of widespread stereotypes that Asians don’t belong in the country, ideas that have fueled acts of violence against Asians. . Americans.
“If this rhetoric happens again, one thing we can predict is that, well, people will probably accept it and feel emboldened to engage in these heinous acts,” she 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 did not has no choice but to make his new life in the US work.
He was one of the few who made the trip with his family. He shares a bunk bed and a couch with his wife and two children in a temporary home in Flushing, where he has placed an American flag on the wall.
Li said they fled China last year after he attended a meeting about the future of a local mosque that was dismantled by riot police and he feared arrest. He chose the USA because it is a free society, where his children learned to recite the Quran.
He said all the migrants he encountered on his journey left China for the US to try to improve their life prospects, and he was grateful for that opportunity. When his children are in school, he studies for a commercial driver’s license and then hopes to find a job and start paying taxes.
“Now that I’ve brought my family here, I want to have a stable life here,” he said. “I would like to give back.”
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Tang reported from Washington.
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