Thirty-six-year-old Chen Wang, from southeastern China, said he decided to come to the U.S. in late 2021 after he posted comments critical of the ruling party on Twitter. He was admonished by local police and feared that he could be imprisoned.

More than two years later, he is still unemployed and lives in a tent in the woods that he has made into a home. Chen described his fellow Chinese on the journey as simply people “chasing a better life.”

Big oof there buddy. Came to the wrong place.

  • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    admonished by local police and feared that he could be imprisoned

    wait till you see what US police will do to you for being homeless you fucking chump

    • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.mlOP
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      2 months ago

      I do in a way. I don’t know how to put it, but to be so thoroughly fooled by the fools gold roads that you’d think an undocumented immigrant could do better here than a legal citizen could do there is very sad. I make more than 4x the fed min wage and the only way I could afford to move out is if I put aside all of my hopes of saving and building a better future. Someone working under the table, without a large family to live with also working under the table, is going to have a really hard time here. And without the support networks that prior immigrants provide, it’s no surprise he lives in a tent in the woods.

      • hello_hello [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        2 months ago

        Wang, who traveled several weeks from Wuhan, China, to Ecuador, to the southern U.S. border, said the idea that Chinese migrants were building a military “does not exist” among immigrants he has met.

        “We came here to make money,” he said.

        I don’t know his exact situation, but I’d rather take a jail sentence and forced labor in China rather than go from ecuador to the US-Mexican border.

        That’s just considering the red scare scenario. It seems to me he thought he would strike it rich with american dollars and abandoned his home country and this government sedition thing is just some candy for american libs to chew on.

        • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 month ago

          Some people really believe their own kool-aid. One of my good Chinese buddies always calls himself a slave in a feudal state. Dude owns his own house fully, has a wife and three kids, has land that he plants food on, makes frequent trips into the city to have fun with friends, has a new gaming laptop every year. He works hard, for sure. But he has so many privileges that it hurts to see how down he is on his life. He is basically living “the American dream” already. And like Carlin said, it’s called a dream because you’d have to be asleep to believe it. Sometimes he brings up these migrants as if they’d only come here if they could succeed here. I don’t want to show him this article because it’s just too much for him to handle and I know he’d go off on a rant about China again.