China resumes cooperating with US on illegal migration

China has quietly resumed cooperation with the United States on the repatriation of Chinese migrants illegally stranded in the U.S., The Associated Press reported Thursday.

The U.S.-China repatriation cooperation resumes amid the influx of Chinese migrants across the southern border of the United States.

China halted the cooperation in August 2022 as part of retaliation over the visit to Taiwan by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Beijing considers the self-ruled island a breakaway province that must one day reunite with the mainland — by force if necessary — and opposes any official contact between Taipei and foreign governments, especially Washington, which supplies weapons for Taiwan to defend itself.

Since the cooperation was halted, the U.S. has seen a spike in the number of Chinese migrants entering illegally from Mexico.

U.S. border officials in 2023 arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals at the southern border, nearly 10 times more than in 2022.

China's Foreign Ministry this week told the AP Beijing was "willing to maintain dialogue and cooperation in the area of immigration enforcement with the U.S." and would accept Chinese nationals who were deported.

The resumption came after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in April told NBC News the U.S. and China were holding high-level talks on the issue.

Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, said negotiations may increase the number of deportations of Chinese migrants in the short term. But he said the real effect on migrants' decision-making process depends more on U.S. resources and capacity to conduct more removals.

"Prior negotiations with Venezuela, for example, did not lead to large increases in removals from the United States partially because it takes time to change structures and implement these measures," he told VOA.

The New York Times reported that 100,000 Chinese nationals are living in the U.S. despite final orders for deportation.

The number of Chinese migrants illegally entering the U.S. on its southern border has shown a downward trend this year, after a record spike in December.

U.S. Customs and Borders Protection (CBP) said that while there were nearly 6,000 arrests of Chinese nationals in December, there were 3,700 in January, 3,500 in February, and just over 2,000 in March.

Soto attributed the drop to stronger visa and border enforcement, but also to China's censoring online information about the route.

"Because technology has become so entrenched in how migrants learn and select travel routes today, unlike in prior years when these were more heavily based on personal knowledge and networks," he told VOA, "it is likely that censoring content in mainstream channels can make it more difficult to travel along existing routes."

Social media platform Douyin, the Chinese version of the short video sharing platform TikTok, has since last year been quietly cracking down on content about "Zouxian," which means "walk the line" in Mandarin.

The term refers to Chinese migrants illegally crossing borders, including into the U.S. from Mexico and South America. It became a popular topic on the Chinese internet a few years ago and was used to search for information and tips on the route.

Reuters reported last year that many Chinese migrants found at the U.S. southern border said they found out how to travel there on Douyin.

https://www.voanews.com/a/china-resumes-cooperating-with-us-on-illegal-migration/7606638.html

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