Parents worried about hate and immigration enforcement in the US are sending their children to specialist boot camps before they leave China to study abroad
Chinese students have been sent to “ICE camps” before starting a new lives in the United States.
Young people preparing to study at American universities had enrolled on specialist boot camps in China where they were trained to deal with everything from kidnappings and robberies to encounters with US immigration officers. The privately run courses emerged as parents became increasingly anxious about reports of violent crime in American cities and tougher immigration enforcement.
In one exercise, students had been preparing for bed when a masked man burst into their room, tied them up and forced them to record a message on their phone asking their parents to pay a ransom, reports the South China Morning Post.
Other scenarios prepared students for telephone scams, hate crime and racism, as well as encounters with the highly controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
One student told the newspaper: “I hope I never have to use any of this, but I definitely feel more alert after learning it.”
Despite those fears, the US remained the favoured destination for Chinese students seeking overseas degrees, followed by the UK and Australia with more than 260,000 Chinese people attended American universities during the last academic year, although that figure had fallen from a peak of more than 300,000.
Western degrees continued to carry prestige despite the rapid improvement of Chinese universities, while studying abroad also gave young people the opportunity to practise English. Some were also drawn to what they regarded as greater freedom and academic openness. But Chinese education and propaganda had spent decades highlighting the inequality and danger found in American cities, often contrasting them with China’s far more restrictive but generally more law-abiding society.
Reports of Chinese academics being deported, detained at airports or arrested had added to parents’ concerns after President Trump cracked down on immigration and China’s involvement with American scientific institutions. China, under the direction of its ruling communist party, has long been cited by Western nations as interfering in overseas countries’ institutions and industries.
Chinese authorities already offered pre-study training for those travelling overseas on government-funded programmes. The course comes as officials also issued a travel warning aimed specifically at students going to America because of the greater hostility they were expected to face from immigration officers.
The private residential “ICE camps” went further, putting students through practical exercises designed to prepare them for situations organisers believed they could encounter while living abroad.
In Britain, the number of students arriving from China had held up better than expected since the coronavirus pandemic, partly because parents nervous about America had chosen to send their children to the UK instead.
