Having fled China because of political persecution or for better economic opportunities, many undocumented Chinese men reject the message they're a threat to the U.S.

Summary

Undocumented Chinese men are alarmed by Trump’s plan to prioritize their deportation, citing baseless national security concerns about “military-age” immigrants.

Many fled political persecution or economic hardship and reject claims of being a threat.

Legal experts warn of racial profiling and expanded ICE raids, urging immigrants to know their rights. Deportation fears grow as China cooperates in repatriation efforts.

Chinese immigrants express anxiety over family separations and harsh consequences if returned, emphasizing they seek safety and stability, not harm.

Critics call Trump’s policies cruel and unjustified.

  • Apathy TreeEnglish
    27•10 days ago

    If only it were just hole in the wall places…

    The local higher end places like sushi and hibachi joints are also staffed almost entirely by Chinese migrants around me. One of the places I worked for a while even had a weird arrangement to get people into the country, probably illegally (they didn’t stay with the company for more than a month before moving on to a bigger city, so I’m sure this was some sort of illegal immigration operation… none of my business.)

    • @EldritchEnglish
      20•10 days ago

      We had a Chinese restaurant here years ago that ran into issues with that. The manager of the location would bus his kitchen staff in every morning. And they would close it and he would bus them home at night. None of them could speak a lick of English apart from the manager. Who was Korean. The kitchen staff was Venezuelan and all undocumented. This went on for years with kitchen staff all living out of a motel on an outer road near the river.

      • @[email protected]English
        6•9 days ago

        Venezuelan no-English kitchen staff working for a Korean manager for a Chinese restaurant?

        Fantastic mix.

        • @[email protected]
          3•9 days ago

          Lots of ethnic restaurants that the back of the house is staffed by illegal immigrant Hispanics. It seems they can pretty much out cook everyone.

          • Apathy TreeEnglish
            2•8 days ago

            We had a little dive diner sort of place in town here that was bought out by a Hispanic family. Cool, do your thing la familia.

            They chose not to update the menu, from boring white people breakfast food to literally anything else. Problem is they had no fucking clue how to make boring white people breakfast food.

            So corned beef hash was just chopped bacon. White gravy was grainy and gross and clearly not made with enough browned oil/butter. So on and so forth. It was just not at all good, and they folded after a few months because yeah you just gave away the bacon (literally).

            So while yes often that’s the case, it really needs to be trained up as an ongoing thing and not just an assumption lol

    • ✺roguetrick✺
      -4•9 days ago

      You’re talking about human trafficking and wage/debt slavery in a pretty blase manner.

      • Apathy TreeEnglish
        2•8 days ago

        I’m not sure exactly what you want me to say about it… I didn’t feel the anecdote required full backstory, but here ya go:

        I worked there years ago for a whopping 6 months, mostly removed from the work those migrants were doing. The owner of the place was a Chinese dual citizen with close ties to her homeland (she went to China 4 times while I was there). I observed these things happening, but frankly I have no idea if it was a legit program or human trafficking. I talked to most of the people that came through in that time (about 2/mth via text with google translate, because I don’t know enough mandarin to do it manually, but they were excited to talk to a native resident even through translate), and they all seemed happy and frankly excited for the opportunity to be there, and had free reign to travel onward to big cities when work came up in their social sphere, which they all did as soon as possible because I’m in a small town.

        When I say that it’s probably illegal immigration, what I assume the owner was doing is signing work visas for people to bring them over totally legally, and then just not disclosing that they moved on to other employers after a month. Or maybe the visas were transferred to the new employer, idk. None of my business.

        Many years prior to that job, when I was in highschool, I worked in industrial agriculture with half documented half undocumented Hispanic workers who were also happy to be there doing what they were doing, and the only thing any of them wanted to change was their legal status (they got paid same shit federal minimum wage as I did, which I know because my dad was the site manager). They were super sneaky, too, and didn’t speak English with any non-migrants at work… except me, despite being management’s offspring. Cuz I worked hard to keep up with them, and I’m cool and wouldn’t rat them out to management as speaking English while I muddle through terribly broken Spanish to keep the front up for them (plausible deniability is valuable at work). I’m chill with making management work harder to employ immigrants if that’s what they want (which they clearly did), but I’m also pretty chill with illegals, because the process to be legal is truly grueling at usually 20+ years.

        So… none of my business. If anyone had ever said or even mildly indicated they weren’t happy with the arrangement, I’d have made effort to do something about it, but they didn’t and I’m not here to ruin lives over speculation.