From China to New York, via the southern border

When busloads of migrants from Venezuela and Latin America began showing up on the streets of New York City in 2022, it sparked a crisis that overwhelmed city shelters and sparked protests over immigration policies.

And while Mayor Eric Adams and city leaders have tried to slow the pace of new arrivals, another smaller but also growing group of migrants has entered the city — largely unnoticed.

Thousands of Chinese migrants have also made their way to New York, many following on the heels of migrants from Central and South America crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. But once they reach the city, many draw on long-established family and social networks in Chinese enclaves to get back on their feet quickly and largely on their own.

It is not known exactly how many Chinese migrants have landed in New York. But immigration court filings since October 2022 show that New York state was their top destination — with more than 21,000 filings for Chinese migrants — followed by California, according to an analysis by Julia Gelatt, deputy director at the Immigration Department. Institute for Migration Policy.

The influx of Chinese migrants to the city is the largest in more than a decade and marks a return to the extensive immigration of Chinese that began in the 1980s, revitalizing distressed neighborhoods like Chinatown and creating newer ethnic strongholds in Flushing, Queens , and Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Yet this resurgence in Chinese migration has attracted relatively little attention, in part because it is dwarfed by the sheer number of people coming from Latin America. The rapid increase in the number of Chinese newcomers nevertheless promises to have a significant impact on New York City and its sprawling Chinese American community of 590,000 people, the largest in the country.

“There is a large-scale migration going on in the Chinese community that is completely off the radar screen,” he says Kenneth J. Guesta professor of anthropology at Baruch College who studies Chinese immigration.

The latest surge in Chinese migrants is partly due to frustration over China’s harsh pandemic-era lockdowns, authoritarian government and deteriorating economy. A wave of online and posts on social media have provided detailed instructions and tips on how to cross the southern border.

In the United States, the number of Chinese migrants has increased dramatically. There were 52,700 Chinese migrants arriving at land borders without valid entry visas by boats and planes during the federal government’s 2023 budget year, or more than double the number just two years earlier, according to the analysis by Ms. Gelatt of the Institute for Migration policy. These figures do not include people who entered without encountering border officials or later overstayed their visas.

These Chinese migrants have increasingly crossed the southern border, and so have the number of border officials there to jump more than sixfold to 5,980 in December 2023, up from 950 a year earlier.

Yet they made up only a small portion of the 3.4 million migrants who have crossed the southern border since October 2022, including more than 974,000 Mexicans and more than 410,000 Venezuelans.

Wang Chao, 39, had worked as a hotel security guard in Hainan province, an island in the South China Sea, before leaving China last October. He flew to Thailand and then to Turkey before landing in Ecuador and beginning the long journey north. He contracted dengue fever and malaria in the rainforests of Panama and was later kicked out of a truck carrying migrants in Guatemala because the driver thought someone was speaking to him in Chinese.

Mr. Wang eventually crossed the border into California, where he said he was briefly detained by border authorities. When he was released, he traveled to Vlissingen, where he arrived in December. He paid $12 a night for a bunk bed in an apartment he shared with other Chinese immigrants before recently leaving the state for work.

The Chinese migrants have largely stayed out of New York City shelters. Fewer than 400 of the more than 173,000 migrants passing through the city’s shelter system since spring 2022 have reported coming from China, according to city officials.

The Chinese newcomers did not have to rely on shelters because they could turn to ethnic enclaves, where many of the city’s 411,000 Chinese immigrants live. Such enclaves have long played a key role in the integration of Chinese immigrants in New York and other cities, said Professor Guest of Baruch College.

These so-called Chinatowns began forming on the West Coast as early as the 1850s, Professor Guest said, providing protection against anti-immigrant violence and discrimination, including the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which imposed restrictive immigration policies from 1882 to the 1940s. formed. “The Chinese built ethnic support systems in which they could pool financial and social capital,” he said.

Today, that informal but well-developed Chinese support system in New York has become a “first refuge” for recent migrants, she said State Senator John C. Liuwhich includes the Vlissingen district.

The Chinese migrants have already helped replenish the city’s population after losses during the coronavirus pandemic, filling jobs in construction, restaurants and other services that keep the local economy afloat.

Chinese advertisements in shops in Vlissingen and online advertising of ‘family hotels’ in apartment buildings that resemble unofficial Airbnb rentals. In Sunset Park, where a large community of immigrants from Fujian province live, they have gathered in churches for Sunday services and Bible study classes.

At Chinatown’s East Broadway Mall, hundreds of newcomers have gathered by word of mouth for help applying for city ID cards and finding health care benefits from community leaders.

Brad Song, 30, a migrant from Hunan who arrived last summer, found temporary shelter at a Chinese massage parlor in Flushing, where migrants could sleep in beds for $10 a night. At the supermarket where he went to buy noodles, a store employee helped him get a job in a Chinese banquet hall. He has also worked for food delivery app Fantuan and installed solar panels for a Chinese company in New Jersey.

But even as the migrants have settled, their growing numbers have also created problems in immigrant communities where many people were already struggling with financial insecurity and social isolation due to language and cultural barriers, as well as fears for their safety after a wave of anti-Semitism. -Asian hate crimes.

There are 1.2 million New Yorkers of Asian descent who make up about 15 percent of the city’s total population, according to a census analysis by Social explorer, a data research company. Within this diverse group – which represents dozens of ethnicities, including Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Indian and Bangladeshi – significant socio-economic disparities exist.

In 2022, Chinese immigrants had a median household income of $60,454, about half that of U.S.-born Chinese, who tend to have higher education and higher incomes. Citywide, the median household income was $75,046.

The Chinese American Planning Council, a social services organization, has expanded its programs to another 20,000 people over the past four years, but “the need is still there,” says Wayne Ho, its president and CEO. Hundreds are still on waiting lists for adult literacy classes, mental health services and four senior centers in Flushing, Chinatown and Sunset Park.

Asian American leaders said their communities have long been underfunded by government programs, in part because of model minority stereotypes of Asians as self-sufficient and upwardly mobile. a Report 2015 found that organizations serving the city’s Asian American communities had received a small portion of the city’s social service contracts.

State Counselor Grace Lee, whose district includes Chinatown, said there is a “false narrative” around the needs of Asian communities that “we as legislators are trying to break.” Ms. Lee, a Korean-American, led a coalition of state lawmakers who helped provide security $30 million in state funding last year specifically for Asian American organizations statewide.

While some newcomers have fled political and religious persecution in China, a growing number — including families, middle-class professionals and small business owners — are seeking greater economic opportunities, said Edward Cuccia, an immigration attorney in Chinatown who has taken on more than 70 new Chinese asylum cases in the past two years. “America is still the golden country in their eyes,” he said.

However, some migrants have discovered that they are not necessarily better off. At employment agencies in Vlissingen, dozens of recent migrants return day after day to wait on folding chairs for a job.

Doris He, 31, was one of the happiest. Ms He started working in a small Chinese bakery after arriving in Vlissingen last year with her husband, Li Jianfeng, 35, and their 9-year-old son. Back in Xi’an, China, she had been a barista at a coffee shop.

“It’s a good start here, but we’re not making enough money yet,” Ms. He said. “Compared to China, we are doing well.”