A couple of weeks ago we weighed in here on that massive spike of illegal Chinese migrants flooding across our borders. No one claims to know exactly what is prompting the surge, which saw nearly 45,500 such encounters in 11 months of Fiscal Year 2023, an increase of 17,500 over the roughly 28,000 in the previous fiscal year.
Of the 45,500, the vast majority (39,427) were single adults, many of them males of military age. In June, Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) claimed that many had “known ties” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Rebecca Grant Ph.D., a national security analyst at IRIS Independent Research, confirmed Green’s charge, telling Newsweek that it was likely because of the large numbers of Chinese nationals already in the U.S.—estimated at 5.4 million. Grant continued:
I’m 99 percent certain that at least a little bit of this is [the] Chinese military infiltrating for reasons harmful to our national security. Is it one person, is it a hundred, is it a thousand—we don’t know, but the fact that we have to ask this question is just outrageous. Clearly, that border is a big opportunity. Some of those people want to come here and have a better way of life, but I think some of those Chinese [nationals] quite possibly are here to spy and report back at a minimum. If you’re a bad guy that wants to infiltrate operatives into the U.S.A., the southern border is a pretty easy way to do it.
It should go without saying that desiring to come illegally to America to “have a better way of life” is not sufficient grounds for requesting asylum, but those legal niceties are widely overlooked these days by people charged with border security.
So, why are the Chinese coming? No one, least of all the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security, knows. When prompted, they laughably point to a “language barrier” that prevents adequate questioning. One might think that, since we already host at least 5.4 million native Chinese speakers, a few of them might be available to interview newcomers in Mandarin, but I guess not.
For more, see Newsweek.