By Aline Barros
As the US marks the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, thousands of Chinese immigrants are crossing the US-Mexico border, mostly for the same reasons as their countrymen did more than a century ago.
Zhongwei Wang made that journey this spring through Central America with his family.
“When I knew there was a way to leave China, I felt overjoyed, really overjoyed,” he said.
According to the US Border Patrol, from January through September, more than 24,000 Chinese migrants crossed the border without authorization, about 13 times the number recorded during the same period last year.
“They see a lack of opportunity. They see the Chinese economy stagnating. There’s also been a lot of frustration with how controlling the Chinese government is, how many restrictions there are on their lives, and people have been researching how to get to the United States,” said Madeline Y. Hsu, a history professor at the University of Maryland.
Hsu spoke at CRCEA80, the gathering on December 5 of nearly 400 representatives from 121 Chinese-American organizations who came together to mark the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the only US law that prohibited immigration based solely on race.
Wang’s Journey
Wang arrived with his parents, his wife, and their two children in May. They left China’s Anhui province, he told VOA’s Mandarin Service, because of the Chinese government’s aggressive COVID-19 lockdown and human rights issues.
The family flew from Hong Kong to Turkey to Quito, Ecuador, which offers a 90-day visa exemption for Chinese passports.
From there, they walked through the Darien Gap, a dangerous path in the mountainous jungle between Colombia and Panama that tens of thousands of migrants used in 2022 on their way to the US“We had to climb four hills on the first day,” he said.
His wife was carrying her 14-month-old son on her back. His mother, who was in poor health, couldn’t walk after climbing the first hill, but a fellow migrant helped along the way.
Those without the means to obtain a visa sometimes choose this dangerous route. Wang said he originally planned to apply for a tourist visa to come to the United States, but at that time the waiting list for a tourist visa interview to the United States was more than six months.
Originally published by Homeland Security News Wire, December 27, 2023.
