Chinese migration to US is nothing new – but the reasons for recent surge at Southern border are

Meredith Oyun for The Conversation analyzes the increase in Chinese migrants at the U.S./Mexico border:

“I’m a scholar of migration and China. What I find most remarkable in these figures is the speed with which the number of Chinese migrants is growing. Nearly 10 times as many Chinese migrants crossed the southern border in 2023 as in 2022. In December 2023 alone, U.S. Border Patrol officials reported encounters with about 6,000 Chinese migrants, in contrast to the 900 they reported a year earlier in December 2022.

The dramatic uptick is the result of a confluence of factors that range from a slowing Chinese economy and tightening political control by President Xi Jinping to the easy access to online information on Chinese social media about how to make the trip.”

In the 1800s and early 1900s, there were significant numbers of Chinese migrants in the border region.  Many entered without inspection because the Chinese exclusion laws made formal admission impossible.

KJ