When Yuxiu Zhou crossed the U.S. and Mexico border with his teenage son last October after a month-long zigzagging trip from China, he believed all his nightmares were behind him.
The corrupt local government officials in his home village in the Southern Zhejiang Province in China who destroyed his dream of being an entrepreneur, and the snakehead in Mexico who sucked him dry by telling him he must buy a Mexican green card to cross to the U.S. were replaced by kind Americans who offered them food and clothes. Even the border patrol officials who locked them up in a detention center in San Diego seemed to be nice. They were released on the second day.
Zhou and his son flew to New York immediately where they were joined by his wife and their teenage daughter, who took the same route across the border a few months later. On the bustling streets of Flushing in Queens, teeming with aspiring new immigrants from China, Zhou, 57, was convinced that with the freedom and democracy guaranteed in America he could “make it” here just by working hard.
Then, Donald Trump was elected President for a second time, and Zhou’s life was cast in shadows again.
Trump’s pledge to start a mass deportation of illegal immigrants on day one has sent chills down the spines of asylum seekers from China, many of whom came here to escape alleged political persecution. They say they fear they will be thrown in prison if they are sent back to China.
Last week, Zhou and some other Chinese asylum-seekers drafted an open letter to Trump to plead with him to let them stay. They plan to send it to the President on Inauguration Day with signatures they are now collecting. “These are people suffering a lot in China, and we identify with American values. We don’t deserve to be hurt again,” Zhou said.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the number of Chinese nationals crossing without papers and encountered by border patrol officers has jumped to 78,000 this year from 23,000 three years earlier, thanks to the lenient border controls of the Biden administration together with China’s draconian COVID measures and its weak economy.
About 10% of the newcomers fled China for political reasons, estimates Wan Yanhai, the founding president of Information for Chinese Immigrants, a Flushing-based organization providing help to Chinese asylum-seekers. This is a shift from the last high tide in the 1990s when almost all of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants smuggled into the U.S. from the coastal Fujian province came to make money. Although many have applied for political asylum based on China’s now-repealed one-child policy, this was more of a legal maneuver than a fundamental reason for coming here.
Wan, a renowned activist in China before settling in the U.S. in 2015, attributes the difference to the rapid development of the private economy in China in the past two decades. That has left many of those who relied on work and a safety net provided by China’s state-owned entities adrift. Social conflicts now are more likely to lead to the system’s oppression against ordinary people. “A simple business dispute can trigger police repression,” said Wan. “So even those who left China mainly for economic reasons could hold grudges against the government.”
That is how Zhou became a dissident. A garment wholesaler in China, Zhou managed to build a six-story building on the land belonging to his family in his village. After he finished the renovation and planned to turn it into a hotel just before the COVID pandemic, the regulators refused to grant him a permit unless he “donated” 200,000 RMB (about $3,000) to them. Zhou declined and tried to make it a residential rental instead. Then the pandemic hit, and the local government rented 10 rooms as quarantine units. But the promised monthly rent of 1,000 RMB (about $140) per room has never been paid.
“I tried to fight. But we ordinary people are powerless. We always lose the fight,” Zhou said. “I realized small potatoes like me cannot survive an unfair system like that no matter how hard I work, nor would my children.”
Invoking Emma Lazarus
About a year ago, Zhou obtained tourist visas to Japan for him and his son. From there, they flew to Mexico and joined other asylum-seekers to cross the border.
Life in New York is far from rosy. He was swindled out of $12,000 by a scammer who promised to obtain an American green card for him in 20 days. After he joined the China Democracy Party, a Flushing organization for Chinese dissidents to organize protests against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in New York, Yuanjun Tang, the former head of the organization, was arrested and charged by federal prosecutors in August for spying for the CCP.
Zhou has mixed feelings about Tang’s downfall. Tang treated him kindly and named him his deputy, Zhou said. But not long after Zhou joined the organization when his wife was still in China, she was interrogated by the police, asking about his pro-democracy activities in the U.S. “Now in retrospect, I wonder who has given them my information,” Zhou said.
Nevertheless, Zhou’s faith in the U.S. has never wavered. The letter to Trump describes Chinese asylum-seekers’ suffering in China, cites the Bible and the “The New Colossus” — Emma Lazarus’s poem engraved on the pedestal of the Statue Liberty — promises to abide by the law and contribute to the country, and asks for an opportunity to stay.
“We would like to grow our families in this land of hope and love, and work to make the U.S. greater, like your grandfather,” it says.
“The New Colossus brought tears into my eyes. Taking care of the tired and the poor who want to breathe free, this is the real American spirit,” Zhou said. At least the few hundred Chinese so far signing the letter to Trump believe so.
They include Xiling Zhao, a 70-year-old retired middle school teacher from Xi’an, who arrived in the U.S. in October. She still turns emotional whenever she talks about her experience in China. After she revealed her support for the democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019 on social media, she got constant harassment from the police. Recently they even confiscated her son’s cell phone. “At my age, it was not an easy decision to leave home,” said Zhao. “But I don’t want to live in oppression any more. Wherever there is freedom, there is my home.”
Mingzhou Dedule, a former middle school teacher from Inner Mongolia, also signed the letter. Dedule said he has been ostracized by colleagues because of his political opinions, and was scolded by his school after he discussed the Cultural Revolution, a bloody chaotic movement for a decade during Mao’s era, in his class. Arriving in the U.S. in September, Dedule said he doesn’t have a fancy American dream. “In a country like this, even if I have to do backbreaking laborious work for my whole life, I’d be happy,” he said.
It’s not clear how Trump would carry out the mass deportation. According to a recent news report, military age men from China, about whom the President-elect has sounded alarm bells several times during his campaign, may be placed high on the list. Overall, Chinese voters in the U.S. have been leaning to the right in elections. Trump won five percentage points more ballots from Asian voters in this election than last time, according to exit polls.
The sentiment may be even stronger among pro-democracy Chinese dissidents. Several prominent leaders of the Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989 who live in the U.S. in exile now have openly shown support for Trump. Some newcomers, despite their concerns about the mass deportation, still think Trump is the right choice. “I am worried about the deportation. But I also want him to rescue America,” Zhao said.
Some Chinese community leaders contend mass deportation is only a campaign tactic that will be tossed away when Trump reoccupies the White House. It’s not possible to deport 12 million people, and those who have filed applications for asylum should worry even less, said Justin Yu, former president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. “America is a country governed by law,” he said.
But Wan is not so optimistic. “No one knows what will happen in the future,” said Wan. “The America we know may no longer exist.”
Zhou is sure he’d get more years in prison than others if he is sent back to China — he is now the head of the China Democracy Party in Flushing that is on the blacklist compiled by the Chinese government. He said he worries about what would happen to his wife and children more than himself. But what pains him the most is the fear that he would lose the freedom and democracy he has already tasted. “America is such a great country. I see it with my own eyes,” said Zhou. “I would be devastated if we cannot stay.”
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