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Why Do They Leave Their Homes?

The search for economic opportunity and social pressure are the top two reasons why some Chinese chose to leave their homeland, according to immigration scholars.

International immigration theory describes "push" and "pull" factors: Greater economic opportunity "pulls" immigrants to the United States, while lower wages and unemployment "push" emigrants from China.

Immigrants believe they can become wealthy in the United States, known as "the Golden Mountain", because wages in the United States are high relative to wages in China. The majority of illegal aliens originate in small villages around China's coastal cities, especially Fuzhou, in Fujian Province (see map). Workers in China earn twice as much in the average city as in rural areas, and seven or eight times more in large coastal cities, such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, than in rural areas ¹.

In the United States, however, the average income is 20 times the average income in Shanghai ². "When the income differential between China and the United States is 1:2 rather than 1:15 or 1:20, that is when Fuzhounese will stop going and even come back," one Chinese entrepreneur told a writer for the Agence France Presse ³. To many workers leaving rural areas in China, the promise of high wages in the United States justifies the risk inherent to entering the country illegally as well as the expense of any smuggling fees.

The disadvantage of working in the United States is that higher wages are accompanied by a higher cost of living. And the relatively low (by U.S. standards) wages earned by illegal aliens are generally insufficient to provide minimum comforts to immigrants trying to pay off enormous smuggling debts. An illegal alien can expect to earn $3 to $4 an hour as a worker in a restaurant or garment factory and will often be expected to work 80 or 90 hours a week to pay off debts, researcher Peter Kwong observed. Illegal immigrants are "constantly trapped in that low end, sweat shop market," because they lack job and language skills, Kwong said⁴.

Unemployment in China is a "push factor." Various estimates for overall employment in China run as high as 23 percent. Experts predict that unemployment will remain a problem even with China's currently high rates of economic growth. ⁵.

It is important to note that workers who leave China tend to come from developed areas that have the infrastructures to provide communication with and transportation to the West. Chinese who choose to enter the United States illegally must have access to significant funds. Smuggling fees run as high as $60,000⁶ and are usually paid with loans from family members and friends. In contrast, most of the 300 million people living in poverty in China⁷ have less exposure to the lures of the West and cannot afford to travel -- legally or otherwise.

Around the Fuzhou area, emigration abroad is commonly seen as the only possible way for an individual to succeed. In some villages, no industries have developed because the majority of workers between the ages of 18 and 45 have left China ⁸. Families will loan money to pay smuggling fees, but will not invest in a relative trying to start a business in China, both because of the difficulties of running a business in China and because of the attitude that more opportunity exists in the United States ⁹.

The faith that some communities have in the "American success story" causes them to generate a great deal of social pressure on their members to emigrate abroad. Fuzhounese have a long tradition of sending at least one family member "to make a living abroad." More recently, having a family member in the United States has become a status symbol. "When people get together they always talk about how their sons or daughters or relatives or husbands or brothers are doing in the United States," according to Ko-lin Chin, an expert on Fuzhounese immigrants ¹⁰.

"People look down on you if you haven't the heart to go abroad, and no girl will like you if you don't give it a try," a journalist for the South China Morning Post said to describe the attitude in Fujian ¹¹.

Not only do some Chinese feel that they must go to the United States to be successful, they also feel the need to appear successful after they do. Although they often find themselves crushed by long work hours and financial demands, Chinese illegal immigrants may be embarrassed to admit their condition to family and friends at home. If immigrants do try to talk about their hardships, their families may choose to believe that the immigrants are lazy or "whiners." ¹²

If a husband is unwilling to venture abroad, his wife may threaten to leave him and make the trip herself. ¹³ Because of the loneliness such separations cause, many illegal immigrants will attempt to help other family members to come to the United States.¹⁴ In addition, the money illegal immigrants send home inspires others to risk being smuggled into the United States.

In addition to pressures from family and friends, Chinese are also encouraged to move abroad by smugglers or "snakeheads". Sometimes, smugglers advertise work overseas, but most find their customers through connections and by word-of-mouth. Smugglers operating within Chinese communities add to the phenomenon of small areas generating large numbers of illegal emigrants. Snakeheads -- much more than the emigrants themselves -- profit from illegally sending their clients abroad. Some scholars estimate that human smuggling generates an estimated $8 billion a year world-wide for criminal enterprises. ¹⁵.

-- Updated August 2005 by Jane Morse, Washington File senior staff writer.

Notes:

1 Jack A. Goldstone, "A Tsunami on the Horizon? The Potential for International Migration," Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the Challenge to America's Migration Tradition, Paul J. Smith, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997) p. 52. (back)

2 Ibid. (back)

3 (quoted in) Marlowe Hood, "Sourcing the Problem: Why Fuzhou?" Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the Challenge to America's Migration Tradition, Paul J. Smith, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997) p. 82. (back)

4 Peter Kwong, author of Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor, in an interview with Jane Morse, Washington File senior writer, May 12, 2000. (back)

5 Charles Wolf, Jr. "China's Rising Unemployment Challenge," Asian Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2004. According to Wolf, RAND (a U.S. nonprofit research organization) has estimated that China's actual unemployment rate may be as high as 23 percent of the total labor force if "disguised" rural unemployment and "unregistered" urban unemployment is taken into consideration.
     Wolf says China's increasing economic growth may not solve the unemployment problem. "For China to sustain a high rate of economic growth, it must combine labor with technology, management, design, and marketing as well as capital," he writes. "The effect of this combination is to raise the productivity of labor substantially and continually." He also notes that "the more rapidly labor productivity increases, the less new employment is created by economic growth."
     The Central Intelligence Agency's "The World Factbook" (updated August 9, 2005) estimates China's unemployment rate in 2003 to run 9.8 percent in urban areas and perhaps as high as 20 percent overall.
     The website for China's Ministry of Labor and Social Security estimates unemployment was 4.2 percent in 2004 for nonrural areas.
(back)

6 Ko-lin Chin, author of Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States in an interview with Jane Morse, Washington File senior writer, July 20, 2000. (back)

7 Paul J. Smith, Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the Challenge to America's Migration Tradition, Paul J. Smith, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997) p. 12. (back)

8 Marlowe Hood, "Sourcing the Problem: Why Fuzhou?" Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the Challenge to America's Migration Tradition, Paul J. Smith, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997) p. 80. (back)

9 Ko-lin Chin, author of Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States, in an interview with Jane Morse, Washington File senior writer, July 20, 2000. (back)

10 Ibid. (back)

11 (quoted in)  Ling Li, "Mass Migration within China and the Implications for Chinese Immigration", Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the Challenge to America's Migration Tradition, Paul J. Smith, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997) p. 79. (back)

12 Ko-lin Chin, author of Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States, in an interview with Jane Morse, Washington File senior writer, July 20, 2000. (back)

14 Ibid. (back)

15 Immigration and Naturalization Services, Backgrounder on Interior Enforcement Strategy, March 29, 1999, http://www.bcis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/backgrounds/inenfbgr2.htm. (back)