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As the influx of Chinese migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border rose last year, disinformation depicting them as drug smugglers or spies for the Chinese government circulated among politicians.
Such inflammatory rhetoric has caused harm in Asian communities across the U.S. and locally.
In Arizona, Asian residents experienced more than 100 instances of racial violence during the pandemic, according to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization launched in 2020 to document anti-Asian activity and incidents of hate in the U.S. during the pandemic.
Research indicates that one-third of Asian Americans are still facing anti-Asian problems after the pandemic.
A Democracy Watch poll conducted in March by Asian and Pacific Islander Vote, a nonpartisan organization representing that demographic, studied the problem. The group found that misleading narratives about the huge number of Chinese migrants entering the Southwest border were gaining traction online.
This research argues this increases the perceived threat against many Chinese and Asians in America. The way stories about Chinese migrants are told only intensifies the years of tension.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection data from April indicates that 27,700 migrants with People’s Republic of China citizenship were encountered at the Southwest border in the fiscal year that began seven months earlier.
That figure already surpassed the total number of 24,314 Chinese migrants in the entire previous fiscal year, 2023, on the border. Fiscal year 2023 had already seen 10 times the number as the prior 12 months.
In Arizona specifically, 4,155 Chinese encounters were recorded in the fiscal year of 2023, a more than 28-fold increase from 2022, when there were only 147.
Two unproven claims about these immigrants rapidly spread on social media: They are either spies of the Chinese Communist Party or the part of Chinese drug cartels smuggling fentanyl into the U.S. The Democracy Watch report defines this information as “fear-mongering narratives,” used by “prominent right-wing actors.”
The report cited Congresswoman Elise Stefanik posting one such statement on her X account.
“Over 20,000 Communist Chinese nationals have illegally crossed the Southern Border since October, and we know the #CCP has set up sleeper cells in our communities,” she wrote. Her post, updated on March 17, recorded 34,700 views and was reposted 256 times.
U.S. officials repeatedly told U.S. news outlets no link existed between Chinese migrants and criminal activities, the study noted.
The study also recommended how Asians and Pacific Islanders should talk about this issue: “If asked, explain that the increase in Chinese migrants is a result of increasing political crackdowns in the country and economic uncertainty.”
Kyle Van Fleet, the anti-disinformation project manager at APIAVote, emphasized that the majority of the mis- or disinformation detected by APIAVote follows the same structure, which foments distrust in democracy and widens the gap among various communities. This has been particularly intensified in AAPI communities since the pandemic began in 2020.
“Since 2016, we’ve seen increasing anti-China rhetoric, only exacerbated by the pandemic, with the same goal: to fear-monger that the CCP, and by extension Chinese people (as well as Asians and immigrants at large), are somehow behind various societal woes and are threats,” Van Fleet said.
“We aren’t aware of any official investigation or confirmation about allegations of Chinese migrants being spies or involved in drug trafficking. However, we are aware that this type of rhetoric and narrative-pushing is an often-used tactic from the playbook to demonize immigrants and communities of color,” he added.
Anti-Asian hate didn’t stop with the pandemic
The well-documented inflow of fentanyl from China into the United States is a highly controversial issue between the two countries. On Oct. 3, an investigation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security led to charges against three chemical companies in China and their workers. They were accused of illegal fentanyl sales.
Starting in 2022, Homeland Security Investigations agents infiltrated Chinese chemical companies that sold narcotics and their precursors online internationally. They discovered that one company shipped over 500 kilos of fentanyl precursors to Tucson via UPS. The fentanyl precursors were not transported by Chinese migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
The fentanyl scare added ongoing fears and ignorance that cropped up during the COVID-19 pandemic. Asian Americans are still feeling ethnic discrimination from it.
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The STAATUS Index Report 2024, a study on attitudes toward Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, published by the Asian American Foundation, documented it. A total of 6,272 Americans across the country participated in this research.
It highlighted that “Nearly 3 in 10 Asian Americans were verbally harassed or abused in the last 12 months because of their race, ethnicity, or religion.”
Another finding of the survey was that “41% of Asian Americans think they are likely to be the victim of a physical attack and 59% of Asian Americans think it is at least somewhat likely that they will be a victim of discrimination in the next five years because of their race, ethnicity, or religion.”
Aggie Yellow Horse, an associate professor of Asian Pacific American Studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University, analyzed data at Stop AAPI Hate.
Moved by the news of an Asian child’s attack in a Sam’s Club in Texas in 2020, and having a child of similar age herself, Yellow Horse decided to do something for Asian communities. She was also curious about the developments in Arizona, which was among the states with the fastest-growing Asian populations in the U.S.
From 2020 to 2022, Stop AAPI Hate reported 112 incidents of anti-Asian hate in Arizona.
Most incidents involved verbal harassment, but there were also cases of behavioral harassment, humiliation through written or visual materials, and threats of physical harm.
Yellow Horse pointed out that this data might be the tip of the iceberg due to lack of information among AAPI people about where or how to report these disturbing experiences.
“Stop AAPI Hate is based in California and people might not even be aware of this group in other states. It was hard for some Asian citizens to get help in the situation of discrimination,” she said.
“Fortunately, it seems that there are now fewer people who harshly tell some Asian students at ASU to ‘go back to your country,’ compared to when the coronavirus first became widespread. However, it is difficult to declare that discrimination has vanished simply because it is not visible.”
‘Anti-Asian sentiment is deeply rooted in the country’
Educating students about the history and culture of AAPI communities in K-12 schools has been suggested as one solution to prevent ethnic conflicts in the U.S.
California has already taken steps toward this goal. In October 2021, it became the first state to mandate ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement.
Yellow Horse also believes in collecting and building accurate data on the AAPI community in the U.S. for an extended period. It is systematically gathering detailed reports of hate incidents, demographic statistics, and media coverage related to the AAPI community, so policymakers and community leaders can devise targeted interventions.
“Because the number of Asian people in the United States is still relatively small, their circumstances and solutions to their issues are often overlooked when discussing national policies. Particularly when trying to identify what the problems are, data is frequently requested, but due to the lack of data, these issues are often left out of the conversation,” Yellow Horse said.
The STAATUS Index Report 2024 concluded: “There is no easy solution to addressing these challenges. Anti-Asian sentiment is deeply rooted in the country, spanning beyond today’s political rhetoric and the cloud of COVID-19.”
Seoka Hwang is a reporter for the Busan Daily News in South Korea. He’s working with The Arizona Republic while on a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.