Stay or go? Under Trump, Dreams Treasly Trek to Chinese Chinese to Chinese

When Pann decided to leave his birthplace in early 2023, he believed that his future was no longer there.

While he was going to the United States, he dreamed of living a free society, a beautiful economy, and a life of honor – the things he said that he never claimed in China, where his home was created by the local government to develop real estate.

To chase that dream, he entered a journey of thousands of miles from China to Ecuador in 223, where he treated the forests as part of his long route. About two months later, he finally did it in the United States.

A soft -speaking man, from a small town in the Jiangsi province of East China, is one of the thousands of Chinese citizens in recent years.

Zo Zian K, or “those who walked the line”, by tightening the dictatorship at home and trusting – sometimes naive, often frustrated – it represents the new wave of migration – that the United States still gives the right shots in good life.

The reasons for their exodus were different, but once their experiences on American soil follows certain trends: Many people are separated by language, burdened with debt, and they have survived Gig’s work while waiting for their shelter claims through a tremendous immigration system.

Some remain optimists. Others are exposed.

And all of this is now living in the long shadow of President Donald Trump’s political return – in the meantime, the recent year of poor America -China relations has increased.

The pan is one of the many Chinese migrants I met the first one two years ago. Like many of the group in which he traveled, he now works in a Chinese restaurant, even though he returned home, he proud of his farm information.

In the United States, those skills are not translated, as the soil situation is different and it does not speak English. There is little currency in the previous life.

After arriving, for a short time, PAN moved from the city to the city, sleeping on the bed taken, or bunking with the with -stories. Finally, he came to Barsto in California, a dusty industrial city.

Today, his life is written in a tight radius. He makes tables in a restaurant during the day, and sometimes waits, video-calls in China at night and repeat the routine the next day. He lives in the room connected to the kitchen.

Outside people and even to his family back home, the life of the pan will feel unbearable. But for him, it is defined what it is lacking, but what is no longer existed. No land seizure. There are no intervention officers. There is no fear of uncontrolled punishment.

“My family does not understand,” he said half a smile. “They ask why I have left behind a comfortable life. But here, it is easy, even though it is easy. That’s free.”

The feeling of the freedom of the pan is calm and stubborn. Two years ago, in the narrow hotel room in Quito of Ecuador, he told me on the eve of his journey that even if he died, it would be beneficial.

He still says the same. “All of this,” again, “this is beneficial.”

Like many budding people, the pan does not have a meaningful social circle – mounting language and cultural difference challenges have limited to interacting with its lives.

Sometimes he travels to Los Angeles to join the Chinese Commerce Embassy. He confesses that the public outline of political differences is partly to strengthen our shelter claim. But this is also because he can do it after several decades of peace.

On June June, the anniversary of the Tyananmen Square Genitals was dated by the Authority by China’s public memory-he once again stood outside the Chinese anti-Chinese Communist Party’s announcement. That day, he discovered James in a familiar crowd.

A young man in the early 30s welcomed West China, traveling from James Darin Gap and from Ecuador to the American border. But if the story of the pan is of quiet stoisimism, James is more dynamic, more uncomfortable.

After his release from the United States Immigration Detination Center, James bounced between the Cash Gigs in the Montary Park in the Chinese-majority suburbs east of Los Angeles. He finally bought a cargo van, fled to the Palm Spring, and the car made both his livelihood and his house.

The van sleeping bag, the gas cannister and the portable charger are confused – that’s all he needs to be satisfied with his life. During the day, he gives food around the city; At night, he parks outside the 24 -hour gym and sleeps on the windows.

James was always a hostel in China. But when Cowed tank the economy and the political crackdown left a few places to breathe, he decided to leave.

James told me, “At least your hard work has brought hope, but back to China, you will be able to work ten hours a day and see the future,” James told me.

Still hope alone is not enough. For almost all novice people, including James and Pan, which are in large numbers with their lives in the United States, Trump’s political return has returned a feeling of instability.

In the southern California, the wave of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE), Trump has constantly tried to expel unmanned immigrants, and the tensions of the United States are increasing with the battle of trade rates, all of which have deepened the atmosphere.

While I was contacting the first immigrants I met in 223, the downtown of the clash between demonstrations and government police forces was revealed in the downtown Los Angeles.

The raid was part of the President’s aim of applying the “largest deportation operation” in the history of the United States – promised to help you win the White House again last year. In the early June CBS News/YouTov survey, 54% of Americans found that they approved their deportation policy.

The administration says that their raids have mainly targeted people with criminal records, though critics say that innocent people are stuck in the drive – the migrants have caused concern.

Almost all the immigrants I have now re -contacted have called the Employment Authority Document (EAD) that allow them to work legally in the United States, but they have not been given an official shelter. In the campaign of Trump’s wide ice attack, people who have the same status as these migrants have been arrested.

But the feeling of fear is because of fear – these raids will be in the Chinese community when and when or when the next recession of China -America relationships may be.

Between Trump’s two presidents, Joe Biden worked in the White House, the US-China relations improved very much. Democrat had previously placed Trump rates and Beijing increased tensions as the rhetoric of the US associate Taiwan’s position.

For some, all the discomfort has led to a question that many Chinese immigrants have begun to quietly asking themselves: Is America beneficial?

In China’s Fuzian province, one man did not think that Kevin was in his thirty decade. Like Pan and James, Kevin traveled to Latin America to reach the United States. But the one he once believed in the American dream now looks like a mirage.

When I asked him how he was settled in the San Gabriel Valley of California, where he lives with his wife and his newborn, he mentioned the ice attacks in LA and answered: “Everything seems uncertain. So no, I don’t think I was settled.”

Kevin’s temptation runs deep. He said, “America, I think it is becoming another China,” he said. “Darwinian Society.”

He added, “If I know how it is really, I probably couldn’t come.”

For a long time, all these immigrants had a shared journey on that treacherous road.

But now that binding is an additional layer: they are emotional compared to two years after they arrive in the United States. Their position in the United States is uncertain, it is strange that they may not have a place for them in the country where they have made everything.

Zoxian waves were driven by depression – but almost like a child like a child on American imagination: This country still shot with respect for all errors. A delivery job. A sleeve of the land. A bed behind a restaurant where no one knocked at night.

Now Trump has promised to attack China’s national security threat, “infiltration warning” and many things related to China.

The effect is clear. This new wave of Chinese immigrants – many of them are still waiting for the shelter – now they are stuck in a pinkr: the Americans are suspended in mistrust, unwanted by Beijing and sometimes suspended in legal lemon.

The pan, for one, for the worst thing, is screaming. “There is no longer certain in the future here,” he said, standing outside Barsto’s restaurant and watching the freeway traffic obscured past. “I care that I can’t be allowed to stay. And if I go back to China…”

He fell behind. For a moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he looked at me, stable, calm, resigned.

“He thinks,” he said, “It is unbearable.”

This is what I saw from that hotel room in Quito, two years and before the world: worried about tired eyes, but below, a part of the perfect concept.

Whatever happens, PAN told me, he has stopped.