One migrant was seen crossing the border wearing a Canada Goose jacket and carrying a new model phone.
The woman, who appeared to have arrived from East Asia, crossed into the United States at Jacumba, Calif., on Wednesday and was seen in news photos.
She was seen lining up with dozens of other migrants who surrendered to Border Patrol agents to seek asylum in the United States.
A Canada Goose parka like the one she wore cost at least $1,100 new, but can be bought used online for as little as $300.
Knockoff copies that look like the real thing are also a fraction of the price, especially if she bought it in East Asia before coming to the US.
One migrant was seen crossing the border wearing a Canada Goose jacket and carrying a new model phone
What kind of phone and how old it is was not revealed in the footage, which was posted on Twitter and seen by millions.
“How is this real?” asked the person who posted it.
Some commentators pointed out that middle-class wealth would not prevent someone from being persecuted and having to flee their homes, especially if she was from China.
‘You assume that the reason she is fleeing her home country is for economic reasons. But often the reason is based more on personal safety. Will the phone and jacket protect her from political persecution?’ wrote one.
The woman, who appeared to have arrived from East Asia, crossed into the United States at Jacumba, Calif., on Wednesday and was seen on news footage
Another wrote that he was a Jewish refugee who walked out of Russia with one suitcase after 12 years of protest against Putin’s oppressive regime.
‘I left with a suitcase, but I had a Macbook and a photo camera (although it was smashed by the police in anti-war protest). But just like how Germany refused me, so would your USA,” he wrote.
In recent months, Chinese migrants have begun to outnumber those from many Latin American countries, particularly in California.
US Customs and Border Protection said so encountered 24,048 Chinese migrants at the US-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, which ended in September — a 7,000 percent jump on the 323 that came amid pandemic shutdowns in 2021.
According to CBP, more Chinese nationals are encountered at the San Diego sector of the California-Mexico border today than Mexicans.
About 21,000 Chinese nationals have been encountered since the new fiscal year started in October, more than the 18,000 Mexicans and second only to about 28,000 migrants from Colombia.
Dozens of Chinese migrants were seen lined up at the border town of Jacumba in California on February 15, brazenly telling reporters how they are here to ‘take the money’.
More Chinese nationals are encountered in the San Diego sector of the California-Mexico border today than Mexicans, according to CBP
Migrants rest in a temporary camp as they await the opportunity to be processed by the Border Patrol after crossing the Mexican border in an attempt to gain asylum in the United States, in Jacumba, California
Most Chinese migrants seeking a new life in the United States usually first fly to Ecuador, where they do not need a visa.
Then they pay smugglers to take them through the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama to the United States, like hundreds of thousands of other migrants from Central and South America.
Many of them pay Chinese ‘snakehead’ gangs that work with Mexican cartels and smuggling groups.
The ‘snakeheads’ have long operated along the border, but the sudden increase in demand has sent business through the roof, former intelligence officer Todd Bensman told DailyMail.com.
‘Chinese smuggling has changed in recent years.
‘Migrants can now take self-drive trips to Mexico by following what they see online or learn in a chat room where they previously had to rely on Snakeheads.’
Migrant aid volunteer Samuel Schultz explained how migrants could stand outside one or two or three hotels in downtown Tijuana, and if they looked strange, they would be approached on the street.
After encountering Chinese smugglers in Tijuana, a metropolis of three million people, the Chinese pay for a trip to a remote area where the Chinese guide tells them where to cross.
The Chinese smugglers stay on the Mexican side and know the entire area with easy access to the US.
A Chinese migrant camp near Jacumba, California has signs showing Chinese asylum seekers where to surrender to US Border Patrol agents
The high success rate of Chinese asylum applications is a long-standing trend, but it has come under the spotlight after an increase in crossings by Chinese migrants last year
The sudden surge in Chinese nationals heading to the US is believed to be part of an exodus from the country triggered by draconian Covid restrictions and Xi Jinping’s repressive regime.
The Chinese wave is part of a historic and overwhelming wave of migrants across the country’s southern border since 2021.
The Chinese arrivals have raised concerns among elected officials about why the citizens of an American enemy are coming here in increasing numbers.
Some have been found to have links to the CCP and its PLA affiliate, but border chiefs are concerned that more are slipping through their grasp.
A US Border Patrol chief warned that his agents are being overwhelmed by the flood of Chinese migrants crossing the border and that they may be short of communist spies.
Many Chinese newcomers say they are simply escaping poverty and China’s declining economy, and many pay thousands of dollars to cartels and human traffickers for a chance at decent-paying work.
One migrant told Nikkei Asia this month that China’s property bubble had burst and once well-paying jobs selling condominiums had ‘dried up’.
‘My monthly salary dropped to 2,000 from 3,000 yuan ($278 to $417), which was not enough to live on,’ the migrant said.
The latest in what has been a series of groups of Chinese migrants arriving at the southern US-Mexico border appeared near California on Monday
The Times spoke to several other migrants in December who claimed they were fleeing the authoritarian government of Xi Jinping, whom President Biden has called a dictator.
“The biggest reason for me is the political environment,” Mark Xu, 35, who teaches elementary and high school English in China but is now in Colombia trying to migrate north.
He added that Xi’s Covid policies made it ‘harder to breathe’ at home.
Gloria Chavez, chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, told the Homeland Security Committee in June that the massive increase in Chinese migrants forced her agents to get a translation service, with each Chinese national taking up to seven hours to interview.
Data from the US government has revealed that mor illegal Chinese migrants have been granted asylum in the past three years than any other nationality.
By 2022, Chinese nationals accounted for 14 percent of all successful ‘defensive’ asylum applications.
These claims are so-called because they are made by those defending against deportation proceedings, so they would include migrants who have crossed the border illegally.
China also tops the table for all types of successful asylum applications with 13 percent of all approved applications.
This is despite the fact that the Chinese were responsible for only 1 percent of all border encounters that year.
About two-thirds of Chinese asylum applications were successful between 2001 and 2021, the third-highest success rate of any country, according to an analysis of immigration court records by Syracuse University.
Last year, the figure was 55 per cent.
More successful asylum applications in the United States are made by Chinese migrants than any other nationality, according to government data
Since 2022, Texas has driven more than 105,000 migrants to so-called sanctuary cities.
However, the Chinese newcomers are a far cry from the destitute and desperate Latin American migrants who only began flooding the border in 2021.
Many of these Asian migrants carried expensive luggage and dressed fashionably – in stark contrast to the South American migrants who often spent months walking and sold every possession they owned to make the journey north to America.
‘I left China and went to Taiwan; from there, Turkey, Ecuador and then fly to Mexico,’ said another Chinese woman, who did not want her name or photo to be shown.
She said she was embarrassed that people at home saw her traveling like this.
In contrast, it is common to see Spanish-speaking migrants who risked life and limb to make the border break down in tears when they reach the US, not ashamed of their countrymen to see them enter the US through the asylum process.
Most asylum seekers from Spanish-speaking countries arrive without a penny to their name and often do not have the money to buy a plane ticket or a bus ticket to their final destination city.