Whoever All These Chinese Are - They Aren't Refugees

Vast numbers of Chinese have shown up at our southern border demanding asylum in the last few years. They have stood out because they are mostly military-aged men and appear at the border relatively well-dressed and in good order. This has raised legitimate concerns about who they really are and what they intend. It also raises another very important question.

If you have the resources to make this trip and arrive well-dressed, well-fed, and well groomed – are you really a refugee to whom the American people should extend a helping hand and charity? Why are we feeding, housing, and sheltering folks who seem to have resources beyond those of many American citizens?

Most Chinese fly from China to Ecuador, because Ecuador does not require visas for Chinese to enter. The Chinese then come overland from Ecuador across Central America to the United States. Not everybody takes this route, however. A significant number fly into Mexico on tourist visas, vacation at a resort in Mexico for a week or more, and then come north.

Erika Pinheiro is an immigration attorney. She works for a group called Al Otra, which helps illegals get into the United States and stay here. She thinks the Biden administration is too hard on asylum seekers if that gives you any idea of her political leanings. Pinheiro has this to say about the Chinese coming across our southern border.

“These migrants tend to have more resources. We have this understanding of asylum seekers as poor and [that] they are only coming to America for economic opportunities, but the people that I’m meeting [at the San Diego, Calif.] border tend to be at least middle class, if not upper-middle class, from their countries.”

Pinheiro, who is the executive director of migrant services at legal aid company Al Otro, says she has spoken to Chinese migrants who have walked through multiple Central American countries, but others who could afford it flew into Mexico and have walked into the U.S. from there.

“Some of them I have spoken to got their [travel] visa like they were going to vacation in Mexico and might’ve spent a week in a resort because they have the money,” Pinheiro said.

Police sources told NewsNation they pay smugglers up to $35,000 to get them across from Mexico into the U.S.

More than 4,000 Chinese nationals were apprehended by Border Patrol in October— a huge uptick from the 329 who were captured at the same time last year.

The Chinese migrants utilize social media apps like WeChat to send step-by-step videos that provide tips including what to pack to get through a jungle and how much money to bring in order to bribe police and officials in different countries.

All of this is occurring against the backdrop of a significant increase in Chinese tourism in Mexico. Airlines and hotels are working hard to make it as easy as possible for the Chinese to travel to Mexico for vacation. Significant numbers of Chinese also travel to Mexico for work purposes.

There is something very surreal about all this. All across the United States municipalities are being crushed by the financial burden of caring for “migrants.” In New York City alone over the next few years they expect to spend $1.4 billion to house people we are told are washing up on our shores fleeing desperate economic circumstances and persecution.

New York has in fact become so desperate to get rid of “migrants that is giving them free tickets to anywhere on the planet if they agree to leave. Already the city has had to cut funding to the police, the fire department, and schools to defray the cost of supporting the hordes of “refugees” flooding in.

Every major city in America is in the same boat. Chicago now has more than fifty shelters crammed with migrants all being housed at taxpayer expense. No one has a plan for how to handle any of this. Even as the economic circumstances of the average American worsen by the day, unsustainable levels of “migration” continue.

We are a kind and generous people. We are all immigrants in some sense, even those of us whose ancestors walked here thousands of years ago from Siberia. There is something very twisted, however, about the idea that a Chinese man who has the cash to fly to Mexico from China, spends a week at a beach resort and then hands a smuggler above $30,000 to get him across the border deserves our support.

Who exactly all these Chinese are and why they are here remains unclear. What is certain, however, is they are not, by any common sense definition, refugees. Send them home.