What was the reason for the increase in Chinese migrants at the southern border last year?

Last year, a record number of Chinese migrants crossed the U.S. southern border without authorization, seeking jobs and freedom from China’s heavy-handed pandemic response. They followed paths that migrants from many countries have long traveled. But here in the U.S., they face a different kind of scrutiny because they hail from America’s greatest geopolitical rival.

Politicians on the right, led by former President Donald Trump, baselessly claim that Chinese migrants are spies or drug traffickers sent by Beijing to harm Americans.

Trump suggested at a rally in May that “military-age men” are “building a little army in our country.”

At the Republican Party Convention in July, former White House adviser to Trump Peter Navarro described migrants crossing the border as “murderers, rapists, human traffickers, terrorists … Chinese spies.”

“Chinese transnational criminal organizations are also ruthlessly exploiting vulnerabilities along our borders, fueling the fentanyl crisis that claims thousands of American lives each year,” Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told a House hearing in May.

None of these claims hold up under scrutiny. Research based on years of federal and local government data shows that unauthorized migrants—whether from China or elsewhere—do not threaten national security or commit more crimes than other immigrants or people born in the U.S. In June, the number of unauthorized border crossings hit its lowest level since 2021, following President Biden’s executive actions to limit asylum claims and ramp up enforcement in Mexico.

“We’re spending a lot of money and creating a lot of fear, but we don’t have good credible evidence[that we should be afraid],” said Rebecca Hester, an associate professor at Virginia Tech who studies migration. “It’s good political theater to say, ‘What if? What if?’ and pretend that you’re tough on crime and tough on immigration. But it doesn’t really help.”

There is no evidence to support politicians’ claims

Many of the people at the center of these stories find them baffling. One is Ying, who says she and her husband trekked through the Darién Gap, the treacherous jungle between Panama and Colombia, seeking religious freedom and job opportunities in America. (NPR is not using Ying’s full name because press reports could intimidate her family, who are still in China.)

“The Chinese government can’t be this unsophisticated. Don’t you think it’s hilarious?” Ying said on a recent sunny afternoon in the Flushing, Queens neighborhood of New York City.

She sat among a group of mostly Muslim migrants sharing a meal after Friday prayers: bubbling soup, spiced meats and vegetables, and plates of cherries and lychees. Some of the women sitting next to her laughed with her at the idea, which they were hearing for the first time.

“It’s not impossible,” Ying said of the stories that the Chinese government could be sending bad people through unauthorized border crossings. “But don’t most people come here to make a better life and escape oppression?”

Her skepticism is shared by people who have long been concerned with national security and immigration.

There is no evidence that Chinese migrants are trying to build an army. Even if there are people with military backgrounds among the migrants, it is unfair to assume they are there to sabotage, said Wan Yanhai, a longtime AIDS and human rights activist based in New York City who has helped newcomers with administrative work needed to settle in the U.S.

Wan worked with veterans in China 20 years ago, organizing people who had been infected with AIDS through contaminated blood transfusions to take legal or political action against the government for compensation. They were campaigners against the Chinese state, not agents of it, he said. “These people are quite, you know, critical in grassroots social organizing,” he said.

Other claims are also false. U.S. government data shows that most fentanyl enters the country through citizens entering legally.

“China is involved in the (fentanyl) supply chain, but not through the people who have been crossing the border recently,” said Elina Treyger, a researcher at the RAND Corporation.

As for Beijing sending spies to the US posing as migrants, no researchers completely rule out the possibility, but they do say the chances are slim.

“Individuals who cross the southern border have to go through quite a journey before they get to a place where they have the position and access to be of significant intelligence value” to the Chinese government, said David Viola, a former Navy intelligence officer who studies terrorism at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The Difficulties of Proving a Negative

So what explains Republicans’ persistent claims about Chinese migrants? First, it’s hard to prove that something didn’t happen.

“Shouldn’t the question be, ‘What is the evidence that undocumented immigrants pose a threat?’” said Doug Ligor, a federal immigration attorney with more than a decade of experience who is now a researcher at Rand. “I don’t quite understand why the immigrant community is being asked to prove a negative when those who are claiming there is a threat have not produced any valid studies to show that.”

Ligor says there may be more prosaic reasons for the influx of migrants, beyond Chinese people struggling to survive their government’s pandemic response. For example, it’s been difficult to get a passport in China during the pandemic.

“That’s going to create push factors,” he said. “Once those lockdowns are lifted, you know, (that) basically released pent-up migration.”

Ultimately, most Chinese migrants came to the U.S. in search of economic opportunities, Ligor said.

Although trekking through jungle, mountains and desert may evoke a military attitude among many Chinese migrants, they describe less dramatic motivations.

Jian Hui is a labor organizer who went to prison in China for fighting for workers’ rights. As soon as he got out of prison and got a passport, he started his journey to the US, crossing the southern border without permission.

Jian considered applying for a U.S. visa, but decided against it. He said that if he applied for a U.S. visa in China, “the Chinese government might not let me leave.”

And if he applies after he leaves China, “it takes forever,” Jian said.

Others said they had no chance of getting a visa at all. Walking through mountains and jungles, even with the possibility of death, became the most feasible path.

Anti-migrant rhetoric is reminiscent of xenophobic history

Many Chinese migrants are too busy trying to survive in America to notice the stories about them, said Ju Ma, a Chinese Muslim community leader living in New York City. After seeing some newcomers sleeping on the streets, he teamed up with other activists and rented the house where migrants, including Ying, were gathering so people could stay for free for short periods.

“American politicians are verbally abusing the most vulnerable people and using them for political gain,” Ma told NPR. He said the way American politicians portray Chinese migrants as threats is similar to how people in the Middle Ages identified witches.

Most labor economists agree that there is no evidence that immigrants are taking jobs from native-born workers. Still, there is a long tradition of blaming and punishing immigrants for America’s domestic problems, says Amy Hsin, a sociology professor at Queens College who has interviewed Chinese who crossed the border before the current wave.

“During the Great Depression, it was Mexican immigrants who were blamed and there was a period of mass deportation as a result,” Hsin said. “During the Gold Rush, the influx of Chinese immigrants was the reason for the Chinese Exclusion Act,” an 1882 law that banned the immigration of Chinese laborers and prevented people living there from becoming citizens.

All this heated political rhetoric feeds into a worst-case scenario that Jian has been building in his head. He feels safe in America, but that safety is conditional.

“If war breaks out between China and the US,” he said, “just like the Japanese-Americans in World War II, people of Chinese descent could end up in a concentration camp.”

To prevent that, he said, “we will have to prove that we are on the side of the free world.”

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