Latest news with #ChineseImmigration
CBC
24-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Journalist explores Chinese family's experience with discriminatory immigration policies
When Florence Hwang worked at CBC Saskatchewan, she reported on the Chinese Exclusion Act and the history of Chinese immigration in the province. Now, for Asian Heritage Month, she's delivering a lecture on Sunday, May 25, 2025 at Moose Jaw's Western Development Museum about her great-grandfather's experience immigrating in 1910 and having to pay the Chinese Head Tax.
Fox News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Immigration expert warns Chinese illegal aliens using Canadian city as gateway to US
An immigration expert says that the flow of Chinese illegal aliens into the United States could largely be supported by the Chinese community in a western Canadian city and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is likely using known Canadian smuggling routes to sneak operatives into the U.S. As southern border crossings have ground to a virtual halt, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian, shared his thoughts on the continuing flow of Chinese illegal aliens from the north. "It would be logical if they're trying to come across the northern border instead," he told Fox News Digital. "And there are lots of Chinese people in Vancouver. I mean there's this very large Chinese population, Hong Kong population, etc." Krikorian said the Chinese population in Vancouver is not so much "teeming with spies" as it is a tool that serves as cover for potential Chinese bad actors looking to cross into the U.S. "Whether they're regular criminals or whether they're People's Liberation Army operatives, or who knows what, a Chinese community gives them a medium through which to move where they're not alien," he said. "It's kind of like one of Mao's sayings," Krikorian said. "'The people are like the sea and the revolutionaries are like the fish.' In other words, they use the people as the sea through which [the revolutionaries] swim." According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the number of Chinese nationals caught crossing into the U.S. via the northern border so far in fiscal 2025 is 4,042. The total in fiscal 2024 was 12,414. The fiscal year closes at the end of September, meaning that the U.S. is on pace for fewer crossings by Chinese nationals this year than last. "It would make perfect sense that they (the CCP) would use preexisting Chinese communities and networks as the medium through which they get into Canada and then [it's] kind of a jumping off point to get into the United States," Krikorian said. Krikorian said potential Chinese illegal aliens enter Canada in various ways, including through student visas and tourist visas, which allow them to be in proximity to the U.S. border in the first place. He also said he believes smuggling routes are well known to Chinese officials and that the smuggling is facilitated by local CCP allies. "A lot of them must be hiring smugglers just because if you don't know the ropes, how do you know where to go and who to talk to and what part of the border to sneak across?" he said. "It's harder than it looks." Krikorian said he does not believe there is currently a grand conspiracy to send groups of Chinese spies into the U.S. via the northern border, especially because of the Trump administration's stricter policies on border security. An operation like that, he said, would more likely occur with more relaxed border policies like the ones during the Biden administration and that the CCP is patient and calculated enough to simply wait until America's borders are open again. However, he said it was unfathomable to think that China would give up on exploiting America's border weaknesses or using preexisting smuggling routes they have used in the past. "I think the main thing is just people coming for dishwashing jobs, like regular illegal aliens," he said. "But if there's a flow like that, the People's Liberation Army is not stupid. They're going to salt it with people they're going to want to use in the future, whether it's saboteurs or spies or what have you. "Does anybody think the Chinese Communist Party is stupid enough not to have taken advantage of this opportunity Biden gave them? No."
South China Morning Post
15-05-2025
- South China Morning Post
How the oldest and largest Chinatown in Mexico rose despite terrible xenophobia
Chinatowns are often portrayed as gritty underworlds riddled with prostitution, gambling and drug trafficking. Some of this is rooted in truth, but that unfair depiction is largely the result of rampant xenophobia and cultural ignorance, especially in the West. In a series of articles , the Post explores the historical and social significance of major Chinatowns around the world and the communities that shape them. Given the distance and language barrier, it is hard to imagine how, a century ago, the Chinese population of Mexicali, a border city between Mexico and the US, outnumbered the local Mexican population in size. It was that generation of Chinese migrants who built La Chinesca, or 'The Chinese' in English – the oldest Chinatown in Mexico. One of the earliest records of Chinese presence in Mexico goes back to 1635, towards the end of Imperial China's Ming dynasty. That year, Spanish barbers protested about competition from the Chinese, which saw the municipality propose to cut the number of Chinese barber shops. Lanterns line the street outside restaurants in La Chinesca. Photo: Instagram/sl_mr05 By the 1870s, the Mexican government had started to encourage Chinese immigration after failing to attract more Europeans to settle, especially in the hot desert state of Baja California, where Mexicali is located.
CBC
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Local artist explores Chinese-Canadian immigration as LAC's new creator in residence
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has hired Eric Chan, a born-and-raised Ottawa artist who blends art and technology, as its first creator in residence. The new position, open to artists, researchers, academics, musicians and people in other disciplines, grants access to the LAC collection to create works that are inspired by its contents, Chan explained. "[LAC] is a national institution and, interestingly, not many people [know], myself [included], what's going on there," he told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning. "They have such a rich collection of pretty much anything you could think of." Chan's work will dive into the history of Chinese immigration to Canada, using the millions of records of Chinese-Canadians stored in the archives. Chan is known professionally as eepmon and has established a large body of work, using code and data to create art. One series of artworks he developed, called CityLights, was inspired by the cityscapes of Japan and generated entirely with computer code. The pieces are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), meaning they are entirely digital and their authenticity and ownership can be certified by a blockchain. Because the CityLights NFTs are created with code, they can be stored exclusively on the blockchain, without existing anywhere else. But when he created a digital art mural for the Canadian Museum of History, it was a shift from his usual work, Chan said. The mural was focused on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923, which banned Chinese immigration to Canada until 1947 and forced Chinese people in the country to carry identification. "For the first time, my art was not just art for art's sake, but really an opportunity to create intergenerational healing within the Chinese community," he said, adding that that ultimately inspired the work he is now doing at LAC. 'Dig deeper' LAC has millions of records and the names of Chinese immigrants going back to the 19th century, Chan said. "The Chinese immigrants coming to Canada were probably one of the most documented peoples coming in," Chan said, adding that the Canadian government assigned them special identification numbers, known as Chinese immigration (CI) certificates, to track them. Chan said he hasn't found any of his relatives' names among the documents, but he knows people who had family members with CI certificates and has been engaging with the Chinese community as part of his work. "It's a part of a Canadian history that we don't talk about," he said, noting that Canadian students read one paragraph about it in a textbook, "if you're lucky." "So I feel that I have, as an artist, a moral obligation to really dig deeper in my own lens," he said. Chan is using computer code and algorithms to create animated "generative pieces" that reflect the totality, or the enormity, of the archival information. One of his pieces speeds through the names of Chinese people from the records on a timeline, showing the year they immigrated. Some of the work he's been doing will be on display soon, on June 7 and 8 at LAC's building in downtown Ottawa. Chan will be there to talk about his work and give a demo. He'll also host a public showcase of his pieces in October after his residency comes to an end.
