My wife and I spent about three and a half years living in working in China. During that time, we were essentially immigrants, even though we didn’t necessarily plan to make China our forever home. We did, however, learn first-hand how China treats its immigrants, especially when we experienced an immigration raid.
Visa Runs
I’ve avoided writing about this, mainly because I don’t want to inadvertently get anyone in trouble. I’ll still try and be as vague as I can about it. However, considering what’s going on now in my home country of the United States, and my home city of Minneapolis, I feel like now’s the time to share this story.
One thing I don’t think many Americans realize is how common it is to break, or at least bend, immigration laws around the world. I’ve met, for example, Russians and Ukrainians working in China as “native” English speakers. Most times, though, you’ll find people working under tourist visas.
Working with a tourist visa is a big no no, but it happens all the time. A tourist visa typically grants you a certain period of time in the country. In China you get two months. All you need to do is take a vacation every sixty days, leave the country and come back and you’re good. It’s called a visa run and everyone does it. English teachers in China do it. Retirees in Costa Rica do it. “Digital Nomads” living wherever they live do it.
Of course, we didn’t do this. We would never work on just a tourist visa. But it happens all the time.
In our case, let’s just say there were some paperwork discrepancies. Minor discrepancies that everyone assured us were no big deal and would be totally fine.
The Day of the Raid
We went to work as we did every day, working with our paperwork discrepancies that everyone assured us were no big deal. My wife was downstairs in the office while I was upstairs tutoring a single student. I believe we were practicing the past-tense.
Suddenly, the door to my classroom opened and one of the teaching assistants popped in. “The police are here,” she said “you need to go hide in Mrs. Lee’s office.”
“What?” I said. I had both heard and understood her, but what she’d just told me sounded so ridiculous that I didn’t quite believe it.
She repeated herself, and my student and I went and hid in Mrs. Lee’s office.
In hindsight, running and hiding and trying to be quiet with a bunch of kids was a stupid idea. The kids were confused about what was going on. Also, how do you expect to keep a bunch of children quiet in a boring office for an indeterminate amount of time? It wasn’t easy, I can tell you that. Especially when all the adults are terrified foreign teachers with no idea what’s happening.
None of us knew what we should do. We just sat and shared our worst-case imaginary scenarios of deportation or prison or worse. This was China after all. The tension built until somebody came up and knocked on the door. We all froze like frightened rabbits until we heard the footsteps receding down the hallway.
In the Office and the Aftermath
The teachers in the office had it far worse than those of us hiding in Mrs. Lee’s office. They had to sit there while the police questioned them about their immigration status and their paperwork. Sure, the police were wearing normal police clothes and didn’t have guns or anything. It was still scary. Especially when they asked about those minor paperwork discrepancies that everyone assured us weren’t a big deal. The interrogation lasted about an hour or so.
More than a few teachers broke down crying. Everyone was shaken. Nobody believed the school administrators who reassured us everything would be fine. We were all scared.
On top of that, we still had to finish out the day and teach our classes.
It isn’t easy to teach a class when you’re afraid you’re going to get deported. Or worse. This was China, after all.
In the end, everyone had about two weeks to get all of our paperwork in order and resolve those minor discrepancies. Phone calls were made. Paperwork was filed. Bureaucracy was navigated. The school might have paid a small fine.
Finally, the fateful day came when everyone had to go down to the station with their updated paperwork. Rather than rounding us up in unmarked vehicles, the police officers glanced over the paperwork, stamped it and we all went on our way.
Oh, and we had to all sign a piece of paper saying we wouldn’t do it again.
Authoritarian China Versus the Democratic United States
China has a lot of issues, of course. The government is known for being strict, to say the least. I am well aware that our U.S. passports give us privileges most people in the world don’t have. That includes the Chinese government treating us much better than they do some of their own citizens.
However, I think it’s worth it to take a moment and compare my experience dealing with immigration issues in China with what’s currently happening in the United States. While what we went through was scary at the time, but nothing compared with what immigrants in the U.S. are going through right now.
The Chinese government didn’t send masked men to knock down our doors or drag us from our vehicles. The Chinese government didn’t round us up, handcuff us and send us to prisons in foreign countries. And they definitely didn’t send thousands of paramilitary soldiers to murder civilians and threaten an entire city in order to deal with paperwork issues and visa discrepancies.
If anything, ICE’s “immigration enforcement” in Minneapolis feels more like China’s crackdown on the Hong Kong protests in 2019. And those protesters were throwing bombs and shit. People in Minneapolis are just blowing whistles and filming officers with our cellphones.
And this is all happening in the United States, the supposed beacon of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. People are being dragged from their homes. Armed men are raiding schools. People are too afraid to leave their house to go buy groceries. All in the name of immigration enforcement.
But in authoritarian China, those of us who violated immigration law just had to sign a paper saying we wouldn’t do it again.
