- Chinese nationals are now reportedly the second largest group near San Diego
- There have been 21,000 Chinese nationals encountered since October
- Number of Chinese asylum seekers has risen rapidly since fiscal 2021
The number of Chinese nationals crossing the southern US border near San Diego has eclipsed the number of Mexicans in recent months, according to a new report.
US Customs and Border Protection has recorded 21,000 encounters with Chinese nationals in the San Diego Sector since the fiscal year began in October, according to CBP data obtained by Fox News that is not yet public.
That’s more than the 18,700 encounters with Mexican nationals during the same period, and second only to the 28,000 Columbians CBP reported encountering in the sector.
Migrants from Brazil (8,700) and Ecuador (7,700) were the next largest groups, and other countries of origin include Turkey, Guinea, India, Guatemala and Peru, underlining the increasingly global nature of migration at the US-Mexico border.
In fiscal 2023, CBP reported 24,048 Chinese citizens were apprehended by Border Patrol at the southern border — up more than 10 times from the 1,970 arrests recorded during the 2022 fiscal year, and just 323 the year before.
Chinese nationals have historically had a high success rate with asylum claims in America, and Beijing often refuses to accept deportation of its citizens whose asylum status is rejected.
The high success rate in remaining in the US has been a lure for many Chinese people to flee the communist country and seek a better life, following years of brutal pandemic lockdowns in China and a stagnating economy that has shaken faith in the ruling Communist Party.
Since Chinese citizens can fly into Ecuador without a visa, many are now taking the arduous 3,000 mile route through the Darien Gap to reach the US, a journey popular enough it has its own name in Chinese: walk the line, or ‘zouxian.’
‘This wave of emigration reflects despair toward China,’ Cai Xia, editor-in-chief of the online commentary site of Yibao and a former professor at the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, told the AP last year.
‘They’ve lost hope for the future of the country,’ said Cai, who now lives in the US ‘You see among them the educated and the uneducated, white-collar workers, as well as small business owners, and those from well-off families.’
But the trend has drawn national security concerns from some officials, who fear some among the asylum seekers have nefarious motives.
Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Good, of the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, told the Homeland Security Committee during a private hearing in September last year that his agents were ‘trying their best to figure out why [individuals from other continents are] coming’ but that ‘information can be hidden’ and ‘their agendas, their ideologies, the reason for them coming could be missed’.
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