Stay or go? Under Trump, dreams disappear

When the pan decided to leave his homeland at the beginning of 2023, he thought his future was no longer.

When he went to America, he dreamed of an economy Freer, and lived in dignity.

To eat this dream, he began on a journey through China in 2023 in Ecuador, from which he mastered the jungle as part of his long career. Two months later, he finally went to the US.

The pan is a soft man from 50 years in a small town in East Jiangxi province in the province of China, with thousands of tens of the same journey of recent years.

Zou Xian KE or “Was the Line”, represent a new migration wave driven by authoritarian tightening at home.

The reasons for changing exodus, but the American soils continue to repeatedly: they areolated by many by language, while waiting for debt and survive for their asylum claims to be an absolute immigration system.

Some remain hopeless. Others are clarifying.

And they all live in the long shadow of the President Donald Trump. There, poor US-China’s poor relationships have further exacerbated.

Pan is one of the Chinese migrants I met two years ago. Like many teams traveled, he works in a Chinese restaurant, even if he returned home, he captured his knowledge of agriculture.

In America, these skills are not returned because soil conditions are different and does not speak English. Life of the past has little currency.

After reaching, the pan went to the city from the city, borrowed sofa tied to sleep or migrants. Eventually, Barstow, California, landed industrial dusty industrial town.

Today is within a narrow radius of his life. He waits for the table of a restaurant during the day and sometimes waits for the table, calling his wife and children at night at night and repeats the routine next day. Lives in a room attached to the kitchen.

Although the outsiders and his family return home, it seemed unbearable life in Pan. However, there is no need to determine, but no longer what is there. No seizure of land. No meddling officer. No fear of arbitrary punishment.

“My family doesn’t understand,” he said with a half-smile. “They ask why I left behind a comfortable life. But here, even if it’s simple, it’s mine. It’s free.”

The sense of freedom of the pan is quiet, but stubborn. Two years ago, in a room at the Quito hotel, in Ecuador, he told me the eve of the trip, although he would die in the route, it would be worth it.

He still says. “All this,” repeated, “It’s worth it.”

Like many new customers, the pan has no significant social circle – the challenges of mounting language and cultural differences are limited to interactions with their migratory lives.

From time to time, he travels to Los Angeles to protest away from the Chinese Consulate. He admitted to a degree to strengthen its asylum claim, establishing a public record of political disagreement. But even after eleven silence, he can.

On June 4, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Square – the authorities basked from the Public Memory of China – he reappeared the slogan of the Communist Party of China from the consul. That day, he saw James among the well-known crowds.

He complained from Western China in the early 30s, James traveled to Darién Gap with James pan and the US border. If the story of Panen is a quiet stoicism, James’s is more kinetic, quieter.

After releasing the US Immigration Arrest Center, James bounces Bounce among the Monterey Park Cash Gigs, the majority of the eastern Chinese in Los Angeles. Eventually, he bought the load van, he turned to the palm trees and made his car for his livelihood and house.

The van is covered with sleeping bags, gas containers and a portable charger. That’s all that has to be content with his life. During the day, food gives food around the city; At night, it parkes out of 24 hours gym and sleeps with windows.

James was always in China. But after Covid Ship, the economy and political crack did not leave a few rooms, he decided to leave.

“At least your hard work involves hope, but returned to China, you can work more than ten hours a day and you don’t see the future,” James said.

However, only it is not enough. James and Pans living in the US, among others, James and Pan, has led to a sense of political returns of Trump.

Emigration and Emigration Waves (ice) attacked by southern California, Trump’s continuous impetus deported immigrants and climbing the US-Chinese tensions to fight a paranoid climate.

In 2023 I first met when I was reconnecting with migrants, the conflicts between the protesters and the strengths of the government were spreading in the new ice attacks in the center of Los Angeles.

Raids had the goal of the President who had the “largest deportation operation” in the US history. Last year he is committed to gaining the white house again. A CBS / Yougov survey in early June found 54% of Americans found that they have accepted his deportation policy.

The administration stated that his attacks are aimed at criminal records, although critics said that innocent people have caught people with the anxiety among the migrants.

Now that all migrants that I connect to the USA is called an Employment Authorization document (EAD), but they do not provide official asylum status. Trump in the extended ice raid campaigns, these migrants have been arrested as people with the same situation.

But driving fear is not a sense of knowing, and these attacks will arrive at the Chinese community or when they could be the next decline in China’s US relationships.

Among the two Trump presidents, the US-Chinese relations were unlikely to be improved when Joe Biden was served in the White House. Democrats were earlier in Trump fares, and the tensions aroused Beijing scaled his rhetoric above the state of Ally Taiwan.

For some, uneasiness encouraged many Chinese migrants that have begun to ask himself: America deserves?

Kevin, a man who was thirty years old from the Province of China, did not think. Like Pan and James, Kevin went from Latin America to reach the US. But when the American dream once believed it feels like a miracle.

As I asked him in the San Gabriel valley of California, he lived with his wife and his newborn son, he referred to the ice attacks in LA, “Not sure. No, I’m not fixed.”

Kevin’s disillusion is deep. “America, for me, thinks that it becomes another China,” he said. “Darwinian society”.

“If I knew what he would be like, I may not come,” he continued.

For a long time, he was a journey that held all these migrants shared in that traitor road.

But now the binding has an additional layer: they now put them under emotions to reach the US and swim two years. It is about realizing that the place in America is precarious.

The wavel was driven by despair, but in addition to the faith of the American idle, this country, for all his mistakes, offered them yet a shot with dignity. Delivery work. A wicked land. The bed behind a restaurant was not knocked at night.

Now, Trump portrayed China as a national security threat, making breakdowns made of “infiltration” and many things related to China, even though these humble expectations feel under the siege.

The impact is clear. This new wave of Chinese migrants still wait for asylum. Now, they feel trapped in a pitcher: Americans, who do not want, beijing, and sometimes without interruption in legal limbo.

Pan, for one, is the worst. “The future here is no longer feeling,” said the outside of the Barstow restaurant, watching the past traffic past the past. “I’m worried I may not stay. And if I return to China …”

He finished. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he looked at me, constantly, calm, resignation.

“He thought,” he said, “it’s unbearable.”

Quito, two years old and remembered from this hotel room I remembered it was the same: worry about blinking behind tired eyes, but under it, the full core of resolution.

No matter what happens, the pan told me, it is usually.