Another family of Chinese immigrants, legality unknown, is in the news again. It is another case of Chinese immigrants coming to the United States to live in Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels, which San Francisco is infamous for. There are numerous such SROs in Chinatown and in the Tenderloin districts.

Most SROs now house homeless drug addicts, but the SROs in Chinatown are unofficially reserved for Chinese only. And those are always immigrants of some sort, sometimes legal, sometimes illegal. Most SRO occupants are subsidized in some manner by the City and County of San Francisco and are basically welfare housing. Occupants are also usually recipients of numerous welfare programs from the county, state, and federal governments. SRO and welfare always go together, though in this story we don’t get an admission of welfare use.

A low-income family from San Francisco’s Chinatown just got a special opportunity they never would have dreamed about.

The Su family, a family of four living in a small room in a single-room occupancy (SRO) building, has been invited to attend the 2023 White House Easter Egg Roll after the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development fought to secure a spot for them.

“I am extremely happy,” mother Xiaoping Su told The Standard in Cantonese. “But we don’t know if we can afford to go.”

Su is the mother of two young daughters, ages 9 and 15, and works part-time as a front desk receptionist. Her husband, Shaoyuan Jiang, is a maintenance worker. They have lived in an SRO since they immigrated to the United States 11 years ago, and have never had a private restroom or kitchen of their own.

[This Chinatown Family Got Invited to the White House—but They Can’t Afford To Go, by Han Li, The San Francisco Standard, April 5, 2023]

The Smiling Face Of Immigrant Welfare Use?

Our immigration system is supposed to weed out families like the Sus. Consular Officers at diplomatic posts overseas are supposed to screen applicants for immigrant visas for the ability to support themselves without welfare and immigration officers are supposed to similarly screen for potential future welfare dependency when an immigrant arrives at a Port of Entry to apply for admission and the granting of Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR), green card holder status, or if they adjust status in the United States.

To anyone with common sense, there was no evidence presented by the Sus when they applied for an immigrant visa or LPR status in the United States or adjusted status that they would be able to care for themselves, like so many others just in San Francisco’s SROs.

And let’s not forget that the Biden Regime repealed the public charge efforts, ineffective as they were, to enforce the law against immigrants that could not support themselves.