PHOENIX — After Helen Wang finishes work at the new microchip plant looming over the Arizona desert, she drives home to start her side hustle: cooking pots of spicy beef soup and pork noodles for Taiwanese colleagues hungry for a taste of home.

There were almost no Asian groceries or Taiwanese restaurants nearby when the first workers began landing on the northern edge of Phoenix two years ago to work at a chip factory operated by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Since then, the workers and their families have turned a mostly white corner of strip-mall suburbia into a Tiny Taipei.

Taiwanese businesses are popping up near taquerias and nail salons. Taiwanese cooks have joined Wang in ferrying meals to the chip factory’s parking lot. Supermarkets have started stocking Taiwanese sauces and noodles. The sound of Mandarin floats through day care centers and schools, where 282 Taiwanese students are enrolled this school year.

The spaceshiplike factory drawing thousands of workers and their families to the area is a crucial part of President Joe Biden’s effort to bolster advanced chip production in the United States. The company, known as TSMC, has committed $65 billion to the project and is set to receive $6.6 billion in grants through the CHIPS and Science Act.

Now, the future of TSMC’s Arizona factory — and the lives of its Taiwanese workers here — may rest on whether President-elect Donald Trump tries to undercut government aid for the company or imposes new restrictions on foreign workers. Although the TSMC project began during Trump’s first term, he has criticized the CHIPS and Science Act and accused Taiwan of poaching the American semiconductor industry, and a debate over visas for skilled workers has already caused a rift among Trump’s backers.

For the Taiwanese workers, the shifting geopolitics of immigration and trade are far beyond their control. They said their main concerns were long workdays spent trying to bring the plant online while adjusting to a new life of eight-lane freeways, children’s play dates and blistering desert heat 7,200 miles from home.

The growing numbers of workers are seeding a cultural and demographic shift where the Phoenix sprawl melts into the Sonoran Desert.

But their arrival has stoked tension inside the plant, where about half of the 2,200 employees have been brought in from Taiwan.

Labor unions in Arizona complained when TSMC sought visas for 500 Taiwanese workers to install highly specialized equipment. And 13 former employees have filed a lawsuit accusing TSMC of having an “anti-American culture.” The suit said TSMC had denied workers who were not Asian or Taiwanese opportunities to advance, giving them poorer evaluations and forcing them out of the company.

TSMC declined to comment on the lawsuit but said in a statement that it believed in the value of a diverse workforce and that it provided channels for employees to raise concerns.

Current and former TSMC employees have said some American workers are not accustomed to the demanding workplace culture and rigorous hours. Cultural differences, including communication style, have led to frustration on both sides.