California Sees Surge in Chinese Migrants

Chinese immigrants attempting to come into the United States through Mexico are at their highest levels in a decade, with many of them finding refuge in California.

Awareness of the situation at the southern border has heightened, highlighted by a public dispute between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration following last week's Supreme Court ruling allowing federal Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire and other barriers constructed in areas like Eagle Pass to prevent illegal immigration.

While a significant portion of the focus of policy changes—such as the Biden administration's lifting of the Donald Trump-era Title 42 policy that permitted expulsions of some 3 million migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic—have centered on legal and extended pathways for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, immigration among Chinese individuals has skyrocketed.

There have been approximately 15,700 Chinese migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border just in the three or so months of fiscal year 2024, already topping the approximate 14,600 encounters in the entire 2023 fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

Between November and December, there were 5,040 and 6,136 Chinese migrant encounters, respectively, as part of the 2024 fiscal year. That compares to 850 Chinese individuals attempting to cross the border in December during the 2023 fiscal year.

More than 24,000 Chinese citizens were apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the 2023 fiscal year—a total higher than the past 10 years combined, and an approximate 7,000 percent increase from 2021 when 323 Chinese nationals crossed the border during the height of COVID.

Chinese nationals topped the list of nationalities of individuals who migrated into the U.S. at the highest percentages, increasing 5,303 percent between 2021 and 2023. Columbia and Peru followed at 2,472 and 2,268 percent, respectively.

About 4.2 percent (1.65 million) of California's entire population is composed of Chinese people, according to Census data. Between 2010 and 2020, Chinese Americans—the largest Asian group in the state— grew by 33 percent, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Those who identify as Asian grew by 25 percent, now making up approximately 17 percent of California residents.

The Migration Policy Institute says that Chinese immigration to the U.S. has accelerated for multiple reasons, including economic conditions and escaping poverty coupled with individuals wanting more religious and cultural freedom.

"Although China's migrant populations have grown, the legal and institutional framework for managing them has lagged," the Institute wrote in a January 2022 report.

"Policy has focused on attracting top professionals, return migrants, and foreign students, but a more robust system expanding migrant rights and encompassing lower-skilled workers and others has been slow to materialize, due to political sensitivities and a notoriously fragmented and opaque bureaucracy that has been dominated by security authorities."

Chinese people were also the fourth-highest nationality to migrate to the U.S. after Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Haitians through Panama's Darien Gap jungle, according to the Associated Press.

Correction: This story was updated on 02/08/24 at 1:01 p.m. ET to correct statewide figures of the overall Chinese population in California.