Chinese Immigrants in the United States
January 15, 2025
By Madeleine Greene and Jeanne Batalova
As the third largest immigrant group in the United States after Mexicans and Indians, immigrants from China (including Hong Kong and Macau) accounted for around 5 percent of the 47.8 million foreign-born residents as of 2023. This population experienced continuous growth for decades—peaking at nearly 2.5 million in 2019—but fell by more than 100,000 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinese immigrants in the United States numbered slightly more than 2.4 million as of 2023, representing a partial rebound to pre-pandemic levels.
The growth in unauthorized immigration from China has drawn considerable attention in the last two years. Encounters by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of Chinese nationals arriving without authorization at the U.S.-Mexico border jumped from approximately 2,200 in fiscal year (FY) 2022 to 24,300 in FY 2023 and 38,200 in FY 2024, and at the U.S.-Canada border nearly doubled from 6,700 in FY 2022 to 12,400 two years later. This rapid increase reflected deepening social and economic challenges in China coupled with long waiting periods for green cards and additional scrutiny for work, student, and other long-term U.S. visas for Chinese citizens. Many Chinese migrants have been driven to leave by a lack of economic opportunity and financial losses related to China’s strict zero-COVID policies. Repression of free speech and free exercise of religion are also motivators of emigration. Moreover, social media has played a notable role in Chinese migrants’ decisions to come to the United States and how they travel. Tutorials on TikTok and similar platforms, for instance, explain how to get to and across the U.S.-Mexico border irregularly. Some Chinese migrants pay smugglers known as “snakeheads” to facilitate the journey.
These developments are only the most recent in a long and complex history of Chinese immigration to the United States. The first period of Chinese immigration beginning in the 1850s prompted the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, considered one of the country’s first major immigration restrictions, which prohibited most Chinese labor migration to the United States and barred Chinese residents from obtaining U.S. citizenship. The modern immigration period began in the 1970s, after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed barriers for non-European immigrants and the Chinese government lifted emigration restrictions in 1978.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/chinese-immigrants-united-states
