Last year, Chinese businessman Li Xiaosan and his teenage son traveled 5,000 kilometers (3,107 miles) through Central America to reach the United States.
In Colombia, they were robbed at gunpoint and lost almost all of their valuables, in Panama they trekked through dangerous jungles and swamps, and in Mexico they made a perilous 12-hour sea journey.
During the Chinese New Year, they were video chatting with their family in China, and Li’s son broke down in tears. “Freedom isn’t free,” Li told him.
Li and his son are among more than 37,000 Chinese nationals arrested for illegally crossing the U.S. southern border in 2023, and Chinese nationals now make up the largest group attempting the dangerous journey outside the Americas, many of them middle class like Li.
“The politics and the economy of this country are all bleak,” Lee told Al Jazeera. “What’s the point of living there without any hope?”
Li’s life in China once seemed like the Chinese dream come true: The 44-year-old grew up in a poor village in central China’s Henan province, got a college education, founded a company selling leather products, once owned several apartments and sent his two sons to an international school in Thailand.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Li’s comfortable life was upended: Orders from overseas customers dried up and his business collapsed. Li returned to his hometown in Henan province, but soon found that China’s strict lockdown policies meant he could not even leave his compound to buy necessary medicines.
Speaking out has landed Li in trouble before. For more than a decade, he has criticized the government online and was interrogated twice by local authorities. The last interrogation in 2022 lasted for hours. For Li, it was the end of his rope.
“Life in China is much better than life in America. There’s nothing in America, but I want to enjoy freedom of speech,” Li said. “I can say whatever I want and I don’t have to worry about the police knocking on my door.”
Lee and her son arrived in the US state of Texas in February last year. They were detained by US border control authorities for five days before being released and travelled to their final destination, New York, where they currently live.
“Vote with your feet”
Like Li, many of the middle-class Chinese who travel to the United States are college-educated, have established careers or businesses in China, and know how to use VPNs to get around official censorship and access a free internet.
Many of them are in their 30s and 40s and grew up during a time of China’s spectacular economic growth and growing global connectivity. But now they feel increasingly stifled by China’s sagging economy and the government’s tightening political control. Many of them are attracted to the United States as both an economic powerhouse and a home for political freedom.
“We’ve known for a long time that there are big problems in our system, but our economy used to be so strong that it hid a lot of the problems,” Vincent Wang, 40, who is in Mexico waiting to be granted asylum in the United States, said of China.
Wang used to run a guesthouse in Dali, a sleepy mountain town in southwest China that’s popular with young domestic tourists. Before the pandemic, his guesthouse was often fully booked and he made an average profit of $4,000 a month. But business plummeted, and even after Beijing finally lifted its strict zero-COVID policies, Wang says the boom didn’t last.
“People don’t have much money on hand anymore. They’re not spending it anymore,” he told Al Jazeera.
Since China lifted its zero-COVID policy, the long-awaited economic recovery has failed to gain momentum. China’s economy grew 5.2% in 2023, meeting its official target, but structural problems, including a real estate market crisis and record debt, have left concerns about slower growth. At the same time, China’s tightening control over all aspects of life, from restrictions on online speech to censorship of the media, has left some Chinese citizens dissatisfied.
Wang said his situation had led to a “political recession” where he no longer saw a future for himself in China. “I’ve lived half my life. I want the other half to be more free,” he said.
Last year, Wang began gathering information about the Central American route on Telegram, a messaging app where many Chinese migrants share their travel experiences.
Earlier this year, he flew to Ecuador and then on to the United States.
Ecuador, which until recently granted visa-free travel to Chinese nationals, has become a gateway to the United States for Chinese migrants. In 2023, Ecuador recorded the entry of about 24,000 Chinese nationals, a two-fold increase compared to the average of the past five years. About 80% of the Chinese are high-skilled or mid-skilled professionals. According to a recent report by the Niskanen Center, a Washington, DC-based think tank, middle-class young Chinese men are the demographic most likely to have the financial means and capacity to complete the migration route to the United States via Ecuador.
Ecuador suspended visa-free entry for Chinese nationals on July 1, citing a rise in illegal immigration, but social media exchanges suggest it may do little to stop Chinese migrants from migrating to the United States via Central America. Some Chinese migrants’ messages on Telegram indicate they plan to start their journey further south from Bolivia, where Chinese passport holders can obtain a visa on arrival. Other Chinese migrants are taking more discreet and convenient routes, such as flying into Mexico with a valid Japanese multiple-entry visa that qualifies them for a visa waiver in Mexico.
For middle-class Chinese like Wang and Li, options for immigrating to the United States are limited. While wealthier Chinese opt for investor visas, those who are less well-off struggle to obtain U.S. visas. The rejection rate for Chinese who applied for U.S. tourist or business visas was 27% last year, higher than before the pandemic. And with a huge backlog of applications, waiting times for U.S. visa appointments in China are now more than two months. Both Li and Wang said the difficulty of obtaining a U.S. tourist visa was one of the reasons they embarked on the perilous journey through the Americas.
Personal Sacrifice
For the middle-aged, middle-class immigrant, the decision to leave China comes with great personal sacrifices. Due to safety concerns, Li left his wife and young son behind. He also had to say goodbye to his father, who had terminal cancer. “My father was already weak,” Li said, his voice trembling. “I knew that if I left China, I would never see him again.” A few months after Li arrived in the United States, his father died.
Undocumented Chinese immigrants also often struggle to support themselves once they arrive in the U.S. Last June, the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles issued a notice saying that many undocumented Chinese immigrants who had recently arrived in the U.S. had chosen to return to China because they lacked legal status or sufficient income. “China opposes and resolutely cracks down on all forms of illegal immigration,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said in April.
Once in New York, Li took on a variety of odd jobs, from construction worker to waiting in a Chinese restaurant to running a stall selling Chinese-made accessories. “It was really hard,” he recalls.
After saving up some money, Li started a translation company earlier this year with a business partner, another Chinese migrant he met in the Panamanian jungle. Now his only wish is to be reunited with his wife and son, who could come to the United States if granted political asylum.
Wang, a former guesthouse owner, is waiting for a digital appointment through CBP One, an app launched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to process appointments for asylum applications.
As he bids his time in Mexico City, he says he plans to live a simple life and take a demanding job if granted asylum.
“To be honest with you, I know America isn’t paradise, but I know where hell is,” he said. “I had to get out of there.”
