Reality Check: U.S. Sees Increase of Illegal Chinese Immigrants

2010-01-24

I guess this would be pretty good evidence that a lot of those "China is poised to rule the world" articles are a bit premature. I still suspect that most of those pieces are written by investment bankers and brokers as a way to pump up business for their China funds, but there are other folks out there who probably also buy into the China-as-imminent-world-power argument.

The number of Chinese immigrants arrested while illegally crossing the border into Arizona through the busiest smuggling corridor in the United States increased tenfold in the last fiscal year, according to the United States Border Patrol in Tucson.

In fiscal 2009, 332 Chinese immigrants were caught in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, up from 30 the previous year, Border Patrol figures showed. And in what could be a sign of a record-breaking pace for this year, agents in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector arrested 281 Chinese immigrants from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, the first quarter of the current fiscal year.

[ . . . ]

[M]ost of those immigrants [ . . . ] were from Fujian Province, in southeast China, and had traveled across the globe to enter the United States because of a lack of education and employment opportunities back home.

Basic point: even a place like the U.S., which is politically FUBAR, on very shaky economic ground, and has much fewer employment opportunities than it did a few years ago, is still a much better place to be for some folks whose alternative is being a dirt-poor peasant. Pardon my bluntness. And remember that here in China, there are about 4.37 gazillion (that's an estimate) of those poor folks.

There is a reason, you know, why Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao keep harping on increased benefits for rural/poor people. It's not just about rebalancing the economy towards domestic demand. There is an actual need for health care, education, and the basics.

It's interesting that at the same time that the U.S. is attracting poor individuals from China and other countries, you have the phenomenon of well educated PRC nationals returning to their home country because of opportunities here. These two things are not mutually exclusive, although it sounds kind of bad for the U.S. in the long run.

Tags: U.S.-China Relations