>Which is a mark of desperation. There's a lot more PRC people so you would get more desperate people. Desperate people want to goto US. Desperate Thais withou

>Which is a mark of desperation. There's a lot more PRC people so you would get more desperate people. Desperate people want to goto US. Desperate Thais without VISA drama just go and overstay, and they've historically overstayed more than PRC when US didn't crack down on PRC VISA. That's the control. Post VISA drama, the amount of PRC who are trying to sneak into US vs net drop in PRC who travel to US is drop in bucket, 30k wants to go, but 1M+ simply choose to forgo. Under previous control circumstances, PRC who wants to goto US and illegally overstay just... fly to US or Can and overstay, same method as Thais, but at less % than Thai. Hence it's geopolitics of VISA changes driving increased VISA changes. Because the people paying the snake heads also seem to be T2 / middle income tier, i.e. they have to be resourced to make the trip in the first place, and they have the opportunity to go because PRC influence in LATAM (triad) have setup good asylum schemes because US state sucker for PRC repression story. They're as much desperate as they are opportunists because geopolitcs has made asylum claims another avenue for getting into US. > live or lived in a T1 city I lived in T1, but I travelled T2/T3 where family are, including even worse bumfuck nowhere rust belt in the north. I see the differences. QoL in these places were still better than what I experienced in rural Thai (away from tourist areas), i.e. Isaan being better than Guizhou and Gansu I find not credible. Well I mean obviously Isann is much better than Gansu as a tourist. Rural Isaan was much more pleasant but people in rural Gansu has more stuff. Which leads to: > stats Stats for development, not stats for broad QoL, which HDI can be proxy indicator but doesn't capture full Qol reality, i.e. I replied with edit above, there's all sorts of additional social transfer / subsidies from central gov to PRC backwaters that supplement income and make QoL for your undereducated peasant/nongming better than disposable income would suggest. They have less HDI QoL but better actual QoL, which is what matters because padding their resumes with education that they're too old to make productive use of is dumb use or resources than just subsidize their income with modern infra, consumption and services. A lot of that doesn't get captured in disposable income and HDI. But it adds up substantially when gov has 5000 more per capita to play various fiscal transfers with, especially if they use to specifically to uplift bottom quantile.